Dialogue 63 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs with our first session for 2023.

[00:08] Bob Dobbs: This will be episode number 63,

[00:12] Bob Dobbs: and we're recording on January

[00:16] Bob Dobbs: 19th, 2023.

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: So,

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: I haven't talked to

[00:21] Bob Dobbs: Cameron in three or four weeks or something.

[00:24] Bob Dobbs: We did our last show

[00:26] Bob Dobbs: December 22nd,

[00:27] Bob Dobbs: so at least three weeks.

[00:29] Bob Dobbs: But I sent him a notice.

[00:32] Bob Dobbs: which he wants me to talk a bit about.

[00:34] Bob Dobbs: So let me bring that up.

[00:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[00:46] Bob Dobbs: So we were on the radio.

[00:56] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[00:57] Bob Dobbs: We started in January the 10th.

[01:02] Bob Dobbs: 1724,

[01:06] Bob Dobbs: what is this,

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: 17th,

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: it was,

[01:10] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[01:11] Bob Dobbs: So on January 10th,

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: we were doing our short show on a Tuesday,

[01:17] Bob Dobbs: and

[01:19] Bob Dobbs: iON announced,

[01:20] Bob Dobbs: he had told me privately,

[01:22] Bob Dobbs: but

[01:22] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know if we were going to talk about it.

[01:24] Bob Dobbs: Usually I let

[01:26] Bob Dobbs: iON decide what's going to be said.

[01:29] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes he tells me,

[01:30] Bob Dobbs: you don't say anything about this.

[01:31] Bob Dobbs: So I think he's not going to say anything,

[01:34] Bob Dobbs: but then he does during the public show.

[01:37] Bob Dobbs: He'll go into it a bit.

[01:39] Bob Dobbs: So he announced that we now have,

[01:42] Bob Dobbs: or Bob,

[01:42] Bob Dobbs: Bob now has five nuclear reactors.

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: what's that mean?

[01:48] Bob Dobbs: We got our first one about a year ago.

[01:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[01:51] Bob Dobbs: as we developed what popularly is known as cold fusion,

[01:57] Bob Dobbs: or in the other end,

[01:58] Bob Dobbs: the big ones called hot fusion.

[02:01] Bob Dobbs: And they announced a month or so ago,

[02:05] Bob Dobbs: the hot fusion guys,

[02:06] Bob Dobbs: that they hope to have something useful in a year or so.

[02:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[02:11] Bob Dobbs: iON says that that hot fusion,

[02:15] Bob Dobbs: big contraption,

[02:16] Bob Dobbs: all they're getting and trying to get is excess heat.

[02:20] Bob Dobbs: What we've gotten with our one or two,

[02:25] Bob Dobbs: I'll just call them boxes,

[02:27] Bob Dobbs: we get endless electricity.

[02:28] Bob Dobbs: We've had that for 10 years.

[02:31] Bob Dobbs: And we've tried to interest people with the Obama government and Hillary Clinton and them,

[02:36] Bob Dobbs: but they didn't,

[02:39] Bob Dobbs: they weren't interested.

[02:41] Bob Dobbs: But Trump was,

[02:42] Bob Dobbs: for some reason,

[02:44] Bob Dobbs: partly because he's on our product,

[02:46] Bob Dobbs: so that might have made,

[02:48] Bob Dobbs: he got some people to listen to our show,

[02:49] Bob Dobbs: and then he heard about this,

[02:51] Bob Dobbs: so he met with J.W.,

[02:54] Bob Dobbs: the guy that

[02:55] Bob Dobbs: iON comes through.

[02:58] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't have to come through,

[02:59] Bob Dobbs: but...

[03:00] Bob Dobbs: generally for public consumption comes through JW.

[03:03] Bob Dobbs: So they became friends over the last four years or so.

[03:07] Bob Dobbs: And so when this led to some meetings with the Department of Homeland Security and some other people in other levels of intelligence,

[03:20] Bob Dobbs: we didn't even know who they were,

[03:21] Bob Dobbs: they would request to meet with JW because he was in Atlanta and they could get to him easily.

[03:29] Bob Dobbs: That happened,

[03:31] Bob Dobbs: and one of the statements,

[03:34] Bob Dobbs: one of the guys said a couple months ago,

[03:38] Bob Dobbs: well,

[03:38] Bob Dobbs: you guys are quite a pair.

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: You come out of nowhere and take over the world.

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: so that's what this guy said.

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: He knew what we had.

[03:48] Bob Dobbs: That was pretty amazing.

[03:49] Bob Dobbs: See,

[03:50] Bob Dobbs: we have a box that can make endless electricity.

[03:52] Bob Dobbs: That's way better than excess heat.

[03:55] Bob Dobbs: So they're working with big stuff in the hot fusion zone.

[03:58] Bob Dobbs: But we've got a small thing,

[04:00] Bob Dobbs: and it's more powerful or more potent.

[04:03] Bob Dobbs: And it's partly because

[04:04] Bob Dobbs: iON told us how to make it.

[04:06] Bob Dobbs: So it's coming from non-physical,

[04:09] Bob Dobbs: which is what iON calls itself.

[04:11] Bob Dobbs: So this is a new kind of science to work with non-physical,

[04:17] Bob Dobbs: whatever that is,

[04:18] Bob Dobbs: and it guides us in making things.

[04:21] Bob Dobbs: J.W.

[04:21] Bob Dobbs: is pretty handy.

[04:22] Bob Dobbs: He's got a lot of money.

[04:23] Bob Dobbs: So he was able to buy the materials to make the thing 10 years ago.

[04:28] Bob Dobbs: So we've had it working.

[04:29] Bob Dobbs: Now as we developed it over the last 10 years,

[04:32] Bob Dobbs: it gave off other energies,

[04:34] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[04:35] Bob Dobbs: So it caused a few earthquakes here and there,

[04:38] Bob Dobbs: and some other strange phenomena.

[04:40] Bob Dobbs: So when the,

[04:43] Bob Dobbs: we'll call them the government,

[04:45] Bob Dobbs: the more inside,

[04:46] Bob Dobbs: secret government,

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: realized we had something,

[04:52] Bob Dobbs: they knew that we didn't know what would happen.

[04:57] Bob Dobbs: as we used it.

[04:59] Bob Dobbs: It's never been around before.

[05:01] Bob Dobbs: So,

[05:02] Bob Dobbs: out of the blue,

[05:03] Bob Dobbs: a year ago,

[05:03] Bob Dobbs: we were given a nuclear reactor,

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[05:06] Bob Dobbs: one of those big fortresses,

[05:09] Bob Dobbs: and we were allowed to tinker with it,

[05:12] Bob Dobbs: play with it,

[05:13] Bob Dobbs: implement it,

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: use it,

[05:15] Bob Dobbs: because if it blew up,

[05:16] Bob Dobbs: it would blow up inside the nuclear reactor structure.

[05:20] Bob Dobbs: You see what I mean?

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: It would keep whatever effects happened within the building,

[05:25] Bob Dobbs: rather than affecting the countryside around,

[05:29] Bob Dobbs: or even atmosphere.

[05:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's why we were given a nuclear reactor a year ago.

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: And so we've used it and developed whatever,

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: fine-tuned it.

[05:39] Bob Dobbs: It's now ready to go publicly when the grid collapses and the government needs something.

[05:46] Bob Dobbs: But meanwhile,

[05:47] Bob Dobbs: I had announced that,

[05:49] Bob Dobbs: it just told me the day before,

[05:51] Bob Dobbs: that we got four more.

[05:53] Bob Dobbs: So we have five nuclear reactors in different parts of the United States that are...

[06:00] Bob Dobbs: It's going to be used to do things,

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: I'll just say.

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: Even make things.

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: But I have to be careful.

[06:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm not supposed to say too much about it.

[06:13] Bob Dobbs: So that's what we announced.

[06:16] Bob Dobbs: So I typed this up and put it on my Facebook page and sent it to you and a few other people.

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[06:22] Bob Dobbs: iON just announced that iONdom,

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: as we call our scene as iONdom,

[06:28] Bob Dobbs: Now has five nuclear reactors for our cold play,

[06:31] Bob Dobbs: which is our term for what we have as opposed to cold fusion,

[06:35] Bob Dobbs: which was made by Pons and Fleischman in 1989.

[06:40] Bob Dobbs: So in brackets,

[06:41] Bob Dobbs: endless electricity.

[06:42] Bob Dobbs: We got our first one a year ago.

[06:44] Bob Dobbs: I've been sitting on that fact until the appropriate timing.

[06:48] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: nuclear reactors,

[06:50] Bob Dobbs: exclamation point.

[06:52] Bob Dobbs: Our cold play is so powerful that we had to test it inside a nuclear reactor in case it blew up.

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: The reactor would contain the explosion if it happened,

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: but we've got it under control now.

[07:03] Bob Dobbs: And I say,

[07:04] Bob Dobbs: can you comprehend this?

[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Who gave them to us?

[07:08] Bob Dobbs: And then I said,

[07:09] Bob Dobbs: Elon Musk is going to have to move aside.

[07:12] Bob Dobbs: Elon Musk is going to have to move aside as we offer the new ground,

[07:17] Bob Dobbs: the new technology.

[07:19] Bob Dobbs: So that's what's happening.

[07:21] Bob Dobbs: You can ask me anything about it that you think about.

[07:25] Bob Dobbs: Do you have any questions or did I explain it?

[07:29] Cameron McEwen: You explained it fine.

[07:30] Cameron McEwen: When you're talking about nuclear reactors,

[07:33] Cameron McEwen: I presume you're talking about nuclear reactors that are no longer active.

[07:37] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[07:38] Bob Dobbs: I don't think there are any active in the States.

[07:41] Bob Dobbs: I think there's 170 of them.

[07:43] Bob Dobbs: Let me just check that a couple of months ago.

[07:46] Bob Dobbs: Let me just see.

[07:48] Cameron McEwen: There's lots of nuclear reactors that are still active,

[07:51] Cameron McEwen: but there's also lots that aren't.

[07:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[07:55] Bob Dobbs: let me just see.

[07:56] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying how many nuclear reactors in the

[08:00] Bob Dobbs: USA?

[08:04] Bob Dobbs: 92. Across the United States,

[08:06] Bob Dobbs: 92 nuclear reactors power tens of millions of homes and anchor local communities.

[08:11] Bob Dobbs: So how many U.S.

[08:15] Bob Dobbs: states have nuclear reactors?

[08:18] Bob Dobbs: 55 locations in 28 states.

[08:22] Bob Dobbs: The majority of nuclear reactors are in the eastern portion of the United States.

[08:29] Bob Dobbs: So,

[08:31] Bob Dobbs: I know where one is,

[08:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where the other four are.

[08:35] Bob Dobbs: iON has not told me.

[08:39] Bob Dobbs: So,

[08:40] Bob Dobbs: we're not sure who gave permission for us to enter one a year ago.

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Or,

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: JW hasn't told me.

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: He may know,

[08:52] Bob Dobbs: but he does say it's strange.

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: We have our suspicions,

[08:55] Bob Dobbs: but my point is that that's how confident somebody is in what we have,

[09:03] Bob Dobbs: and they're giving us the proper environment for it to develop it.

[09:06] Bob Dobbs: So that's the really good news.

[09:09] Bob Dobbs: We got the recognition we couldn't get from Obama's administration,

[09:14] Bob Dobbs: and I would attribute that to Trump.

[09:17] Bob Dobbs: We don't seem to have much interaction with...

[09:20] Bob Dobbs: The Biden cabinet,

[09:21] Bob Dobbs: well,

[09:21] Bob Dobbs: nobody does,

[09:22] Bob Dobbs: eh?

[09:22] Bob Dobbs: What is Biden?

[09:23] Bob Dobbs: We don't even know what he is.

[09:25] Bob Dobbs: But we are involved with the more secretive parts of,

[09:31] Bob Dobbs: I guess you'd call it,

[09:31] Bob Dobbs: national security.

[09:33] Bob Dobbs: They're the ones,

[09:33] Bob Dobbs: and they don't change with administrations too much.

[09:38] Bob Dobbs: So the permanent government is called continuity of government.

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: The permanent government is who I think is...

[09:49] Bob Dobbs: sponsoring us.

[09:51] Bob Dobbs: So let's see.

[09:53] Bob Dobbs: That's the big news,

[09:54] Bob Dobbs: and we're on our way.

[09:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anything's going to stop us unless there's some nuts that are really pissed off who are investing in other technology and are going to try to sabotage us in some ways.

[10:08] Bob Dobbs: We really have pretty good protection.

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: Essentially,

[10:11] Cameron McEwen: the ground is New Science.

[10:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[10:15] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[10:16] Cameron McEwen: The box itself is an effect of the New Science,

[10:20] Cameron McEwen: right?

[10:20] Bob Dobbs: Yep,

[10:20] Bob Dobbs: and it's...

[10:23] Bob Dobbs: spiritual,

[10:25] Bob Dobbs: biblical,

[10:25] Bob Dobbs: or something,

[10:26] Bob Dobbs: because

[10:27] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[10:28] Bob Dobbs: I will show us quotes in the Bible where it talks about us.

[10:32] Bob Dobbs: The famous Ezekiel wheel within a wheel is a reference to this device.

[10:36] Bob Dobbs: So the device comes from wherever iON's from.

[10:40] Bob Dobbs: And so

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: iON says that regular science cannot create any new stuff now.

[10:46] Bob Dobbs: They have to work with non-physical or with iON,

[10:49] Bob Dobbs: whatever that is.

[10:50] Bob Dobbs: So we're the first to do that.

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: So it's a whole new kind of science.

[10:54] Bob Dobbs: And I like to read McLuhan and LaRouche to see if they are on to that.

[10:59] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[11:00] Bob Dobbs: Do they recognize there's a New Science,

[11:03] Bob Dobbs: a new effect,

[11:04] Bob Dobbs: so to speak?

[11:05] Bob Dobbs: I think

[11:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was hinting at it.

[11:09] Bob Dobbs: Maybe we can find quotes.

[11:11] Cameron McEwen: He was more than hinting at it.

[11:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talked about New Science in those words a lot.

[11:24] Cameron McEwen: in the

[11:25] Cameron McEwen: 1970s, and his writings and lectures on it from that time are preserved in

[11:35] Cameron McEwen: The Global Village and in

[11:37] Cameron McEwen: Laws of Media.

[11:39] Cameron McEwen: So in those two posthumous books,

[11:42] Cameron McEwen: he speaks over and over again about New Science and contrasts it to old science.

[11:48] Bob Dobbs: And he does mention in terms of devices or efficient causality,

[11:52] Bob Dobbs: in one piece he talks about the natural development of anti-gravity devices due to now living in tactile space.

[12:01] Bob Dobbs: So we're not subject to visual space gravity.

[12:04] Bob Dobbs: So he predicted that.

[12:06] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[12:06] Bob Dobbs: I never heard it,

[12:07] Bob Dobbs: but he and Eric did a series on CBC around 1970 on pyramids,

[12:12] Bob Dobbs: and that was like acoustic space or something,

[12:15] Bob Dobbs: or maybe...

[12:16] Bob Dobbs: Tactile space.

[12:17] Bob Dobbs: Did you ever hear of that?

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: That radio series they did?

[12:21] Cameron McEwen: No,

[12:21] Cameron McEwen: but

[12:22] Cameron McEwen: I remember talking to

[12:26] Cameron McEwen: Eric one day on the phone about his interest in

[12:31] Cameron McEwen: Egypt.

[12:33] Cameron McEwen: He wrote a book on Egypt that's not published,

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: and he dedicated a lot of his time to Egypt.

[12:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[12:44] Bob Dobbs: he had a theory.

[12:46] Bob Dobbs: He told me in his art class in 78 at the Ontario College of Art and Design,

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: I guess it is,

[12:53] Bob Dobbs: that the hieroglyphics on Egyptian artifacts,

[12:58] Bob Dobbs: as you see the profile of the person and some other factors,

[13:02] Bob Dobbs: and he says it means they're spinning.

[13:05] Bob Dobbs: Remember him telling you that?

[13:06] Bob Dobbs: The image is spinning.

[13:08] Bob Dobbs: And so there's motion.

[13:10] Bob Dobbs: The way they're drawn,

[13:11] Bob Dobbs: it is indicate motion.

[13:13] Bob Dobbs: So they're like cartoons.

[13:15] Bob Dobbs: He found great significance in that.

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: But if you look at it...

[13:20] Cameron McEwen: That's sort of a literalism,

[13:22] Cameron McEwen: right?

[13:22] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[13:23] Cameron McEwen: behind that idea is that there's another kind of visuality at play.

[13:30] Cameron McEwen: And

[13:32] Cameron McEwen: I think this other kind of visuality points to New Science away from old science.

[13:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[13:40] Bob Dobbs: I'd call it the tactile eye.

[13:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[13:43] Cameron McEwen: that would work.

[13:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[13:44] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.

[13:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[13:46] Bob Dobbs: you hear that noise.

[13:48] Bob Dobbs: Is that coming from you or me?

[13:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't hear a noise.

[13:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[13:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[13:55] Bob Dobbs: It's on my end.

[13:56] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[13:57] Bob Dobbs: So hopefully it's not too bad.

[14:01] Bob Dobbs: So the other thing is in Eric's 1998-99 book,

[14:05] Bob Dobbs: The Electric Language,

[14:07] Bob Dobbs: he talks about ESP.

[14:10] Bob Dobbs: He extends what his father said in a sentence or two.

[14:13] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember those sentences in that book?

[14:16] Cameron McEwen: No.

[14:18] Cameron McEwen: Eric gave me the book,

[14:19] Cameron McEwen: and I read it,

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: but it's been

[14:22] Cameron McEwen: 20 years.

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: he says the anti-gravity and other strange new kinds of non-Newtonian technologies are naturally going to come forth.

[14:38] Bob Dobbs: And he also says parts of the brain will be extended by computer.

[14:43] Bob Dobbs: Like you have the general central nervous system extended by television and electricity,

[14:47] Bob Dobbs: say,

[14:48] Bob Dobbs: but the particulars in the brain,

[14:51] Bob Dobbs: maybe digital apps,

[14:53] Bob Dobbs: come from some parts of the brain functions.

[14:56] Bob Dobbs: So I remember him saying that in there.

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[14:59] Bob Dobbs: they were thinking about this stuff,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: and so...

[15:02] Bob Dobbs: They'd be interested and wouldn't be puzzled by what I'm talking about,

[15:06] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.

[15:10] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: basically,

[15:12] Bob Dobbs: like he says,

[15:12] Bob Dobbs: he describes,

[15:13] Bob Dobbs: Eric describes television as a certain way in the electric environment.

[15:19] Bob Dobbs: And naturally,

[15:19] Bob Dobbs: you're going to get new effects that aren't part of visual space.

[15:25] Bob Dobbs: Are you there?

[15:26] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[15:26] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: of course.

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[15:28] Bob Dobbs: That aren't part of visual space.

[15:29] Bob Dobbs: So.

[15:31] Bob Dobbs: They're predicting that science will have different models,

[15:35] Bob Dobbs: have to have different concepts,

[15:36] Bob Dobbs: different models,

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: as it probes the new effects.

[15:40] Bob Dobbs: And to me,

[15:41] Bob Dobbs: that's what iON is about.

[15:44] Bob Dobbs: And so it's very appropriate that

[15:47] Bob Dobbs: I stumble in and evoke iON accidentally.

[15:51] Bob Dobbs: Since I was McLuhan's archivist,

[15:53] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[15:54] Bob Dobbs: naturally I picked up on that,

[15:56] Bob Dobbs: eh?

[15:57] Bob Dobbs: I continue Marshall's work with iON.

[16:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[16:03] Cameron McEwen: I think that's

[16:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's deepest intention is to have people continue the work.

[16:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[16:11] Cameron McEwen: Because to continue the work is a realization of communication.

[16:18] Cameron McEwen: And what

[16:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was talking about from very early times,

[16:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[16:25] Cameron McEwen: from 19,

[16:27] Cameron McEwen: in the 1930s already.

[16:29] Cameron McEwen: was the deep reality of communication.

[16:32] Cameron McEwen: That's what Logos is.

[16:34] Bob Dobbs: Do you think his father was into that,

[16:37] Bob Dobbs: being into Rosicrucianism,

[16:39] Bob Dobbs: and that might have sparked that kind of thinking?

[16:42] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,

[16:43] Cameron McEwen: but

[16:44] Cameron McEwen: I think it was his mother that...

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: No,

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: his father was...

[16:47] Bob Dobbs: He used to have a pretty interesting conversation with his father.

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: I read that somewhere.

[16:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[16:51] Bob Dobbs: mother too,

[16:52] Bob Dobbs: but

[16:53] Bob Dobbs: I think his father might have been more speculative,

[16:57] Bob Dobbs: where she was more active.

[16:59] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[17:00] Cameron McEwen: I agree with what you're saying there.

[17:02] Cameron McEwen: I was just remarking on the specifics of an interest in Rosicrucianism.

[17:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: The mother took that up later,

[17:15] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[17:16] Cameron McEwen: when she was in Detroit.

[17:17] Cameron McEwen: So this was in the late

[17:20] Cameron McEwen: 1930s and early

[17:22] Cameron McEwen: 1940s.

[17:24] Cameron McEwen: His conversations with his father were more around 19.

[17:28] Cameron McEwen: when they were both still in Winnipeg.

[17:30] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[17:31] Bob Dobbs: but his father might have been talking his strange ideas.

[17:34] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[17:34] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[17:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[17:35] Cameron McEwen: He was an Irishman,

[17:36] Cameron McEwen: right?

[17:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[17:38] Cameron McEwen: He had an interest in all sorts of stuff that was outside the norm.

[17:43] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: So Marshall McLuhan,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: he was in,

[17:48] Bob Dobbs: what,

[17:49] Bob Dobbs: a free-ranging intellectual environment there with his parents.

[17:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:54] Cameron McEwen: relative to Winnipeg.

[17:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[17:56] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: not.

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: free-ranging relative to the world.

[18:00] Cameron McEwen: It took him

[18:01] Cameron McEwen: 20 or 30 years to catch up.

[18:05] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[18:06] Cameron McEwen: to what was going on in the wider universe,

[18:11] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[18:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[18:15] Bob Dobbs: That's that.

[18:16] Bob Dobbs: I've explained to you and people listening can ask me about it.

[18:21] Bob Dobbs: I can't say much more than what I said.

[18:23] Bob Dobbs: I said as much.

[18:25] Bob Dobbs: But what's interesting Thanks.

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: for general consumption is that I'm proposing that this is a new way to do science with this other source that helps you,

[18:37] Bob Dobbs: that guides you.

[18:40] Bob Dobbs: What I like to say is that iON is a new technology which talks about itself and its effects.

[18:48] Bob Dobbs: And we do discuss the effects of what we're going to do.

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[18:51] Bob Dobbs: we're not just crudely saying,

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: wow,

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: let's put this out there.

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: you know destroy the economy and everything the people lose jobs uh we're very careful on what this means uh to society so yeah go ahead well there's an interesting dialectic here um

[19:11] Cameron McEwen: in that the um the uh any kind of device is dependent upon a science that is deeper than it but

[19:23] Cameron McEwen: the device creates a new environment,

[19:28] Cameron McEwen: which then allows the deeper science to be perceived.

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: Is the deeper science the concept that comes to you?

[19:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[19:38] Cameron McEwen: well,

[19:39] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[19:39] Cameron McEwen: just if you think about chemistry 200 years ago.

[19:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[19:44] Bob Dobbs: that's what we were going to go into.

[19:45] Bob Dobbs: So this will be appropriate.

[19:46] Bob Dobbs: So you sent me an email.

[19:49] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if I can find it here.

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: I can read it.

[19:54] Cameron McEwen: I think it was January the

[19:55] Cameron McEwen: 4th, was that?

[19:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[19:56] Bob Dobbs: January the

[19:58] Bob Dobbs: 4th, the date received.

[20:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[20:11] Bob Dobbs: here it is.

[20:17] Bob Dobbs: You say...

[20:20] Bob Dobbs: You sent me an email on January 4th,

[20:23] Bob Dobbs: tactile space is the medium that is the message.

[20:27] Bob Dobbs: And then you sent me a new thing you've written called Three Types of Space,

[20:33] Bob Dobbs: the new blog.

[20:34] Bob Dobbs: And you say,

[20:35] Bob Dobbs: does this post,

[20:36] Bob Dobbs: and I read it,

[20:37] Bob Dobbs: but your question is,

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: does this post remind you of our attempt at communication in

[20:43] Bob Dobbs: Mark Stahlman's place more than 30 years ago?

[20:45] Bob Dobbs: That was in 1998.

[20:48] Bob Dobbs: And I said...

[20:49] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember.

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: And you started to say to me your answer.

[20:54] Bob Dobbs: And so I said,

[20:56] Bob Dobbs: well,

[20:56] Bob Dobbs: let's record this.

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: So the chemical elements is where you started.

[21:02] Bob Dobbs: So what happened?

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: What did you tell us?

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: I asked you what got you into McLuhan or something,

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: right?

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: What sparked your interest?

[21:08] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[21:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[21:10] Cameron McEwen: And so then

[21:11] Cameron McEwen: I began to describe what I took to be the spectrum.

[21:19] Cameron McEwen: of experiential elements and uh i think uh at that point you decided that i was uh too conceptual or um to something or other no that was later in 99 2000 when we were on peter

[21:38] Bob Dobbs: um peter's uh what his name was uh peter but i don't i don't know i don't recall you saying anything i don't I don't think I understood it,

[21:48] Bob Dobbs: what you were saying.

[21:49] Bob Dobbs: It's totally blank.

[21:52] Bob Dobbs: And I didn't even know you were saying that in your post in 99-2000 on that McLuhan list.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: But when we started talking in 2015 or so,

[22:05] Bob Dobbs: or maybe a little earlier,

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: we did a series.

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: That's when you told me what you're going to say now.

[22:11] Bob Dobbs: And it's the first time I heard it.

[22:13] Bob Dobbs: But go ahead.

[22:13] Bob Dobbs: You were saying,

[22:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[22:14] Bob Dobbs: it sounded conceptual,

[22:15] Bob Dobbs: but show me how it isn't conceptual.

[22:19] Bob Dobbs: or whatever it is that it is.

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: So what's the idea about chemistry?

[22:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[22:27] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[22:30] Cameron McEwen: what I tried to do in this post is talk about what tactile space is as opposed to visual space or audio space.

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[22:40] Cameron McEwen: And the reason that I thought that this might be interesting in terms of our conversations

[22:48] Cameron McEwen: starting over 20 years ago,

[22:51] Cameron McEwen: is that the last time we spoke,

[22:55] Cameron McEwen: you asked me about the medium between us.

[23:00] Cameron McEwen: And

[23:01] Cameron McEwen: I said,

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: it's the medium of dialogue and of tactile space.

[23:07] Cameron McEwen: And you said something like,

[23:10] Cameron McEwen: no,

[23:11] Cameron McEwen: I was talking about the telephone.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[23:15] Cameron McEwen: And so my response.

[23:18] Cameron McEwen: to that is this post where I try to show that tactile space is like New Science.

[23:26] Cameron McEwen: It's not like a device,

[23:27] Cameron McEwen: like a telephone.

[23:29] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[23:30] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[23:31] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to say that.

[23:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm fully aware of what you're saying,

[23:33] Bob Dobbs: and I agree,

[23:34] Bob Dobbs: because electricity is tactile,

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: and we're not sure what it is,

[23:38] Bob Dobbs: and everything that's been made the last 150 years is strange.

[23:42] Bob Dobbs: And so to emphasize tactility is...

[23:45] Bob Dobbs: most important thing about the electric environment,

[23:47] Bob Dobbs: not the acoustic or the visual.

[23:49] Bob Dobbs: So if you're saying that,

[23:51] Bob Dobbs: then I agree.

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: But

[23:54] Bob Dobbs: I do,

[23:55] Bob Dobbs: half of tactility is object,

[23:56] Bob Dobbs: the other half is not object,

[23:59] Bob Dobbs: because it's an interplay of different factors.

[24:02] Bob Dobbs: So

[24:03] Bob Dobbs: I was just saying telephone,

[24:05] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't mean that was the whole thing.

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: That's not all of tactile space.

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: It's a part of tactile space.

[24:10] Bob Dobbs: You got to have that technology.

[24:12] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[24:14] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: The tactile space is an environment,

[24:19] Cameron McEwen: and within an environment,

[24:21] Cameron McEwen: things become possible that weren't possible before.

[24:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[24:26] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[24:26] Cameron McEwen: So,

[24:27] Cameron McEwen: as we were just saying a few minutes ago,

[24:31] Cameron McEwen: the dialectic between how an environment gets established,

[24:39] Cameron McEwen: what then becomes possible in that environment,

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: and what those things in the environment

[24:46] Cameron McEwen: then enable people to see and to sort of activate within a society.

[24:57] Cameron McEwen: That's a very,

[24:58] Cameron McEwen: very interesting topic and one that is not possible within the confines of old science.

[25:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[25:09] Cameron McEwen: The very conversation about this takes place in New Science.

[25:14] Bob Dobbs: So use your example of chemistry.

[25:18] Bob Dobbs: You may have mentioned it in earlier talks,

[25:20] Bob Dobbs: but just to set that up and then say what is this new space,

[25:24] Bob Dobbs: how it's different from chemistry,

[25:26] Bob Dobbs: or it's the same approach that chemistry evoked,

[25:30] Bob Dobbs: but there is something different.

[25:32] Bob Dobbs: So we're going to get into what's different.

[25:34] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[25:35] Cameron McEwen: but let's just start with the fact that in 1800,

[25:40] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[25:41] Cameron McEwen: the environment...

[25:44] Cameron McEwen: chemistry was fully active.

[25:46] Cameron McEwen: It had always been active and it always would be active,

[25:50] Cameron McEwen: but nobody could see it.

[25:52] Cameron McEwen: It was invisible.

[25:54] Cameron McEwen: So you had an environment that was determining everything in our bodies and in the world around us and in the cosmos to its furthest reaches,

[26:05] Cameron McEwen: but nobody knew about it.

[26:07] Cameron McEwen: It was invisible.

[26:09] Cameron McEwen: And it was invisible,

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: according to McLuhan,

[26:11] Cameron McEwen: precisely because

[26:12] Cameron McEwen: It was the environment.

[26:14] Cameron McEwen: So according to McLuhan,

[26:16] Cameron McEwen: environments per se are invisible.

[26:20] Cameron McEwen: But what happens in history is that events can evoke an environment.

[26:28] Cameron McEwen: They take place on the basis of the environment,

[26:31] Cameron McEwen: but they somehow evoke it.

[26:34] Cameron McEwen: And that's what happened with chemistry.

[26:36] Cameron McEwen: People began to delimit the chemical elements.

[26:41] Cameron McEwen: And that illuminated the environment that was already there.

[26:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[26:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[26:46] Bob Dobbs: what's the first action?

[26:47] Bob Dobbs: Is it Lavoisier?

[26:48] Bob Dobbs: Who's the person that sort of gets the credit?

[26:51] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier and Priestley.

[26:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[26:54] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier is the...

[26:56] Cameron McEwen: Priestley still was very much involved with old science and phlogiston.

[27:04] Cameron McEwen: And so Lavoisier was the guy that began to...

[27:10] Cameron McEwen: figure out that it was possible to define atoms or elements that had been talked about since the Greeks,

[27:24] Cameron McEwen: so for over 2,000 years,

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: but nobody had been able to isolate how talk about atoms and elements could be communicated.

[27:39] Cameron McEwen: Because if you just have talk,

[27:43] Cameron McEwen: then you have alchemy.

[27:44] Cameron McEwen: Anybody can say,

[27:46] Cameron McEwen: well,

[27:46] Cameron McEwen: this is an element or that is an element,

[27:49] Cameron McEwen: but they're unable to communicate that in a deep way that allows other people to do the same experiments and to come to the same results and on the basis of those results to advance further.

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[28:06] Bob Dobbs: so what,

[28:07] Bob Dobbs: now that came in with the alphabet,

[28:08] Bob Dobbs: but what experiments do you do?

[28:09] Bob Dobbs: did they do 2,500 years ago?

[28:13] Bob Dobbs: Static electricity stuff?

[28:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[28:15] Cameron McEwen: they weren't really doing experiments.

[28:18] Bob Dobbs: So what did they do?

[28:19] Bob Dobbs: They just talked about the idea,

[28:21] Bob Dobbs: which was the effect of the alphabet,

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[28:23] Bob Dobbs: that there's a particular...

[28:26] Cameron McEwen: No,

[28:26] Cameron McEwen: this is a very good question,

[28:27] Cameron McEwen: and people have looked into it a lot.

[28:32] Cameron McEwen: For example,

[28:32] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger,

[28:33] Cameron McEwen: as he got later in his career,

[28:36] Cameron McEwen: became more and more involved with...

[28:39] Cameron McEwen: the pre-Socratics.

[28:41] Cameron McEwen: And in Heidegger's analysis,

[28:48] Cameron McEwen: which is somewhat parallel to McLuhan,

[28:53] Cameron McEwen: with the development of philosophy and the economy and everything that became possible sort of true classical Greece,

[29:07] Cameron McEwen: you not only had great...

[29:09] Cameron McEwen: efficiencies and great advances in various fields,

[29:13] Cameron McEwen: but you also had loss.

[29:15] Cameron McEwen: So according to

[29:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, and I think this is also true of Heidegger,

[29:24] Cameron McEwen: before

[29:25] Cameron McEwen: 400 in Greece with the pre-Socratics,

[29:30] Cameron McEwen: you have a kind of window onto a premonition,

[29:36] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[29:37] Cameron McEwen: of New Science that was lost in the development of old science.

[29:45] Cameron McEwen: So in this sense,

[29:47] Cameron McEwen: the new came before the old.

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: Would that be Plato versus Aristotle?

[29:53] Cameron McEwen: No.

[29:54] Cameron McEwen: First,

[29:55] Cameron McEwen: any kind of,

[29:57] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[29:57] Cameron McEwen: Plato was this and Aristotle was that and their relation was this is not very good.

[30:04] Cameron McEwen: And sort of you could say in the popular conception,

[30:08] Cameron McEwen: Plato is sort of an airy-fairy abstract guy and

[30:13] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle is more of a practical guy.

[30:16] Bob Dobbs: A accountant is a chartered accountant.

[30:19] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[30:20] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[30:21] Cameron McEwen: It's.

[30:22] Cameron McEwen: All of that is nonsense.

[30:23] Cameron McEwen: Both Plato and Aristotle are far deeper and far wiser than anybody today.

[30:33] Cameron McEwen: And one way to think about the attempt to get into New Science is the attempt to recover what those guys knew.

[30:46] Cameron McEwen: They were sort of people with one foot in the...

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: pre-literate environment and one foot in the post-literate environment.

[30:56] Cameron McEwen: And so they were in an intellectual realm.

[31:01] Cameron McEwen: They were a little bit like Shakespeare in an aesthetic realm where the Elizabethans had still one foot firmly planted in the pre-literate

[31:16] Cameron McEwen: and one foot in the literate.

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: and

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: in that divide they were able to produce these great plays.

[31:26] Cameron McEwen: So something like that is also true of Plato and Aristotle.

[31:31] Cameron McEwen: So when

[31:35] Cameron McEwen: Havelock, let's say,

[31:36] Cameron McEwen: in preface to Plato,

[31:38] Cameron McEwen: is talking about the great change that takes place into a literate environment,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: while that's true,

[31:47] Cameron McEwen: it's also true

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: that there's a great deal in

[31:51] Cameron McEwen: Plato that recalls the pre-Socratics.

[31:57] Cameron McEwen: And Havelock himself was very aware of this.

[32:02] Cameron McEwen: So you had asked me about what was before Plato,

[32:10] Cameron McEwen: and I'm trying to say that there was an intuition of New Science that became lost.

[32:19] Cameron McEwen: And we had talked about pre-tribal awareness.

[32:25] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[32:27] Cameron McEwen: So this pre-tribal awareness was a factor in the development of a literate environment,

[32:40] Cameron McEwen: but it was a factor as an unknown cause.

[32:45] Cameron McEwen: Whereas before...

[32:48] Cameron McEwen: the literate environment with the pre-Socratics,

[32:53] Cameron McEwen: there is a sense of pre-tribal awareness that is what we need to recover today.

[33:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[33:03] Bob Dobbs: So as they got into Aristotle and then the Hellenic period,

[33:09] Bob Dobbs: they're getting bogged down in visual space.

[33:13] Bob Dobbs: The eye is starting to dominate,

[33:14] Bob Dobbs: so they lose the flexibility.

[33:16] Bob Dobbs: Tactility of the

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: Plato and pre-Plato or the pre-Socratics who are half literate and half pre-literate,

[33:24] Bob Dobbs: right?

[33:25] Bob Dobbs: That's what's going on.

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: It's more balanced back there.

[33:27] Cameron McEwen: But remember,

[33:29] Cameron McEwen: in all of this,

[33:29] Cameron McEwen: there isn't good versus bad,

[33:33] Cameron McEwen: a decline versus an advance and all this sort of stuff.

[33:37] Cameron McEwen: There's always both.

[33:39] Cameron McEwen: So what takes place in

[33:42] Cameron McEwen: Greece starting around 400 BC?

[33:46] Cameron McEwen: has been the decisive influence on all of Western civilization.

[33:51] Cameron McEwen: So many of our words go back to the Greek at that time,

[33:55] Cameron McEwen: and so do many of our institutions and our very way of looking at the world.

[34:01] Cameron McEwen: So what took place

[34:03] Cameron McEwen: 2,500 years ago,

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: on the one hand,

[34:09] Cameron McEwen: was a tremendous advance in insight.

[34:16] Cameron McEwen: Modern science,

[34:18] Cameron McEwen: humanities,

[34:21] Cameron McEwen: medicine,

[34:22] Cameron McEwen: all of these things only became possible through that.

[34:26] Cameron McEwen: And to that extent,

[34:27] Cameron McEwen: it was a great advance.

[34:29] Cameron McEwen: But no advance is made without a retreat.

[34:34] Cameron McEwen: So what happens in classical Greece and what is particularly realized,

[34:40] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: in the

[34:42] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,

[34:44] Cameron McEwen: is that

[34:46] Cameron McEwen: By taking a sharp focus.

[34:50] Cameron McEwen: And sharp focus is by definition literate.

[34:54] Cameron McEwen: By taking a sharp focus,

[34:56] Cameron McEwen: you can invent all sorts of things.

[35:01] Cameron McEwen: So this is the discovery of discovery that

[35:03] Cameron McEwen: Whitehead talked about.

[35:05] Cameron McEwen: The sharp focus,

[35:08] Cameron McEwen: however,

[35:10] Cameron McEwen: when it enables all sorts of amazing things like new manufacturing techniques,

[35:16] Cameron McEwen: new medical techniques,

[35:18] Cameron McEwen: new discoveries.

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: When sharp focus is used in these ways,

[35:24] Cameron McEwen: it necessarily abstracts from other important things.

[35:31] Cameron McEwen: And these other important things do not go away.

[35:34] Cameron McEwen: They build up and build up and build up and create a crisis.

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: Did you say distracts,

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: not abstracts?

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: Distracts.

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: both.

[35:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[35:44] Bob Dobbs: Distracts.

[35:44] Cameron McEwen: I accept that.

[35:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: So a crisis builds up.

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[35:48] Bob Dobbs: is chemistry...

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: chemical elements 200 years ago,

[35:51] Bob Dobbs: is that one foot in the literate and one foot in the electric?

[35:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[35:58] Cameron McEwen: I would say,

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[36:00] Cameron McEwen: first off,

[36:01] Cameron McEwen: the electric isn't something that's only new.

[36:04] Cameron McEwen: Our awareness of the electric is new.

[36:09] Cameron McEwen: But the electric and the tactile were always active,

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: are always active,

[36:16] Cameron McEwen: and always will be active.

[36:19] Cameron McEwen: So there's a difference between an active environment and our knowledge of that environment.

[36:25] Cameron McEwen: So when people were discovering the chemical elements,

[36:30] Cameron McEwen: they were operating in New Science and in tactile space,

[36:34] Cameron McEwen: but they didn't know that.

[36:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:37] Bob Dobbs: So did chemistry develop refined visual space or they did something,

[36:42] Bob Dobbs: they brought in kinetic space?

[36:44] Bob Dobbs: What is it that chemistry and the elements is new?

[36:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[36:50] Cameron McEwen: what happened beginning around 1800 and then coming to fruition with Mendeleev's table in 1869,

[37:00] Cameron McEwen: what happens is that chemistry introduces a new way of looking at the environment.

[37:08] Cameron McEwen: And that new way of looking at the environment produced all sorts of new manufacturing techniques,

[37:15] Cameron McEwen: all sorts of new ways of conducting war.

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: All sorts of new ways of communicating.

[37:22] Cameron McEwen: So the telegraph in the

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: 1830s gets developed through the sort of laboratory experience that chemistry grounded.

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: that chemistry revolutionized.

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: The alchemists were very active in laboratories,

[37:43] Cameron McEwen: but they did not produce a common focus.

[37:48] Cameron McEwen: within their work.

[37:49] Cameron McEwen: That's what chemistry is.

[37:51] Cameron McEwen: Chemistry is the refinement of alchemy so that different researchers have the same focus.

[37:58] Bob Dobbs: They get on the same page.

[38:00] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you mean?

[38:01] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[38:01] Cameron McEwen: That's absolutely correct.

[38:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[38:04] Bob Dobbs: explain how that's done by the discovery of whatever Lavoisier discovered.

[38:10] Bob Dobbs: What did he find?

[38:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[38:12] Cameron McEwen: what

[38:13] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier did was he began to

[38:17] Cameron McEwen: intuit that there were ways of isolating elements.

[38:25] Cameron McEwen: And

[38:26] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[38:26] Cameron McEwen: I haven't looked into what Lavoisier was doing for decades,

[38:32] Cameron McEwen: but

[38:33] Cameron McEwen: I believe he was working with mercuric oxide.

[38:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[38:38] Cameron McEwen: And what he was doing was measuring

[38:45] Cameron McEwen: what happens when mercuric oxide is heated.

[38:49] Cameron McEwen: And when mercuric oxide is heated,

[38:53] Cameron McEwen: then you get oxygen as one of the products.

[38:57] Cameron McEwen: And so what

[39:01] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier did,

[39:03] Cameron McEwen: somewhat in common with

[39:05] Cameron McEwen: Priestley, was isolate how you can focus on oxygen in a laboratory setting.

[39:15] Cameron McEwen: And that idea then gets applied to all sorts of other elements that had been known for some of them for thousands and thousands of years,

[39:27] Cameron McEwen: like silver and gold and tin and iron.

[39:33] Cameron McEwen: All of these are actually elements,

[39:36] Cameron McEwen: but they hadn't been known as elements.

[39:39] Cameron McEwen: So what chemistry does is it gives you a kind of handle on how

[39:44] Cameron McEwen: how to talk about these things that are already active in the environment.

[39:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[39:49] Bob Dobbs: you know that sentence in

[39:52] Bob Dobbs: The Medium is the Massage,

[39:53] Bob Dobbs: when information is brushed against information,

[39:55] Bob Dobbs: the results are startling and effective,

[39:58] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[39:59] Bob Dobbs: So chemistry started to brush information against information,

[40:03] Bob Dobbs: new ways of substance.

[40:06] Bob Dobbs: then made new substances and then brushed them against other substances.

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: Is that basically what happened?

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: and universities got labs.

[40:18] Cameron McEwen: They didn't have them before,

[40:21] Cameron McEwen: at least labs that were structured with their own journals and with professors going back and forth between universities and having students and creating traditions within science.

[40:36] Cameron McEwen: All of that took off around 1800,

[40:40] Cameron McEwen: and it produced the modern world.

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: who's a resistor of that?

[40:45] Bob Dobbs: Mesmer and Paracelsus?

[40:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[40:51] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[40:51] Cameron McEwen: Paracelsus is as much earlier than that.

[40:54] Cameron McEwen: Mesmer is a little bit earlier than that,

[40:56] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[40:58] Cameron McEwen: But

[41:00] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that they are resistors of that,

[41:04] Cameron McEwen: but they are...

[41:06] Cameron McEwen: people that exposed other things.

[41:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[41:10] Bob Dobbs: So who is a famous,

[41:14] Bob Dobbs: who's an old stodgy conservative,

[41:16] Bob Dobbs: so to speak,

[41:17] Bob Dobbs: in relation to Lavoisier?

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: Is there any names?

[41:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[41:21] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[41:21] Cameron McEwen: there are all sorts of names of people that were trying to point to,

[41:27] Cameron McEwen: excuse me,

[41:28] Cameron McEwen: point to a wider reality,

[41:32] Cameron McEwen: right?

[41:33] Cameron McEwen: So.

[41:33] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[41:35] Cameron McEwen: in England,

[41:35] Cameron McEwen: people like Wordsworth and Coleridge were already trying to say,

[41:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[41:44] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute.

[41:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[41:46] Cameron McEwen: we've got these cities that are exploding,

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: but there's also nature and we can't forget nature.

[41:55] Cameron McEwen: So there were all sorts of people,

[41:59] Cameron McEwen: Mary Shelley with her book Frankenstein.

[42:03] Cameron McEwen: There are all sorts of people who saw that there was something else or that there were problems.

[42:10] Cameron McEwen: And there were always people that were saying that we needed to be cautious with the idea that we're only advancing.

[42:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[42:28] Bob Dobbs: And that became the hypnosis.

[42:31] Bob Dobbs: the big word progress in the 19th century.

[42:33] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[42:34] Bob Dobbs: So then you had sort of the divide between the humanists and the engineers about how much to rein in the drive for progress,

[42:44] Bob Dobbs: and nobody could stop the progress.

[42:47] Bob Dobbs: I think of Marshall McLuhan writing about Lewis in 43,

[42:50] Bob Dobbs: 44,

[42:50] Bob Dobbs: about basically me to extend our appetite.

[42:54] Bob Dobbs: So the appetite for novelty just takes over in the 19th century.

[42:57] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan said there was more invention in the 19th century than the 20th century,

[43:01] Bob Dobbs: or at least up to his time.

[43:04] Bob Dobbs: And so the humanists were always fighting a rear guard,

[43:09] Bob Dobbs: right?

[43:11] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[43:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:13] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[43:14] Cameron McEwen: But there was not,

[43:20] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,

[43:22] Cameron McEwen: it was not as if...

[43:29] Cameron McEwen: What was going on in the actual environment as opposed to the perceived environment,

[43:37] Cameron McEwen: what was actually going on in the wider environment of both progress and retrogression at the same time,

[43:48] Cameron McEwen: that environment was sensed.

[43:52] Cameron McEwen: Nobody was able to articulate it in a way that produced an understanding of what was actually going on.

[44:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[44:02] Cameron McEwen: People tried to do that.

[44:04] Cameron McEwen: People like Spengler tried to investigate what could be called the widest possible environment.

[44:18] Cameron McEwen: And so people like Spengler were very important.

[44:21] Cameron McEwen: important at the University of Toronto in the middle of the 20th century.

[44:30] Cameron McEwen: Northrop Frye was interested in Spengler.

[44:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was interested in Spengler.

[44:35] Cameron McEwen: Innis was interested in Spengler.

[44:37] Cameron McEwen: And it wasn't the details of what Spengler was talking about.

[44:42] Cameron McEwen: It was the idea that there is a wider environment to what is called

[44:50] Cameron McEwen: going on,

[44:50] Cameron McEwen: a wider environment that's implicated in world wars and in the depression of the

[44:59] Cameron McEwen: 1930s. And until we get a way of focusing that larger environment,

[45:05] Cameron McEwen: these disasters are going to keep happening.

[45:08] Bob Dobbs: Would you say it's a wider effect?

[45:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[45:13] Cameron McEwen: so the wars and depression,

[45:15] Cameron McEwen: our economic depression,

[45:17] Cameron McEwen: were taken to be effects of something that was not quite known.

[45:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[45:25] Cameron McEwen: So lots of people like Keynes put forward ideas of how these things happened.

[45:31] Cameron McEwen: But as we can see today,

[45:35] Cameron McEwen: nobody really...

[45:39] Cameron McEwen: knows what the hell's going on.

[45:41] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[45:42] Cameron McEwen: we're more confused than ever.

[45:44] Bob Dobbs: So the humanist side caught up in a way,

[45:51] Bob Dobbs: though it took McLuhan to point it out,

[45:53] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: Eliot,

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: Pound,

[45:55] Bob Dobbs: and

[45:55] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, and maybe Yeats.

[45:58] Bob Dobbs: They were seeing the wider environment.

[46:03] Bob Dobbs: Maybe McLuhan did come up with the best way to define it and lay it out.

[46:08] Bob Dobbs: using them as examples,

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: early canaries in the mine,

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: in the collective mind,

[46:13] Bob Dobbs: or collective mine,

[46:14] Bob Dobbs: M-I-N-E.

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: But would you agree with that,

[46:16] Bob Dobbs: that Spengler was on something,

[46:20] Bob Dobbs: but those four guys,

[46:23] Bob Dobbs: the four evangelists in Finnegans Wake,

[46:25] Bob Dobbs: were picking up something that Spengler missed in his field,

[46:31] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[46:32] Bob Dobbs: They were seeing things in his field that he didn't see.

[46:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[46:36] Cameron McEwen: so...

[46:38] Cameron McEwen: At least in my view,

[46:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is the one guy that found a way to focus the environment that people like

[46:55] Cameron McEwen: Pound and Eliot and Joyce and Yeats were working in and that they sensed.

[47:03] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan was the guy that...

[47:06] Cameron McEwen: supplied the focus.

[47:11] Bob Dobbs: How about this?

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: How about

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: Joyce and them?

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: They were the Lavoisier level,

[47:18] Bob Dobbs: or times,

[47:19] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall McLuhan was Mendeleev's periodic chart level.

[47:23] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[47:23] Cameron McEwen: that's more or less my theory right there.

[47:26] Bob Dobbs: You have that?

[47:26] Bob Dobbs: You've said that?

[47:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[47:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[47:31] Cameron McEwen: that's what I say over and over again in the blog.

[47:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: you say that in the three spaces thing that we started talking about.

[47:39] Bob Dobbs: We'll look at a couple.

[47:40] Cameron McEwen: But I've been talking about that in the blog for,

[47:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[47:43] Cameron McEwen: in this blog and in a previous blog since at least 2000.

[47:50] Cameron McEwen: Or,

[47:52] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[47:52] Cameron McEwen: I didn't have a blog before that.

[47:54] Cameron McEwen: But since we met,

[47:56] Bob Dobbs: you had that in your mind in 98.

[47:59] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[47:59] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[48:00] Cameron McEwen: And I have been and had been talking and writing about it.

[48:04] Cameron McEwen: since 1980 at least.

[48:08] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good.

[48:10] Bob Dobbs: But that was always in an academic context,

[48:13] Bob Dobbs: right?

[48:16] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[48:17] Cameron McEwen: I was involved in business for most of those years in different ways.

[48:24] Cameron McEwen: And

[48:25] Cameron McEwen: I had the idea already in the

[48:30] Cameron McEwen: 1970s that it might be easier.

[48:33] Cameron McEwen: within a business environment to talk about these ideas than an academic one.

[48:38] Cameron McEwen: That was something that

[48:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan himself thought for many years.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[48:45] Bob Dobbs: Did you bring these ideas up when you went to those seminars around Derrida,

[48:50] Bob Dobbs: whatever you studied in Europe?

[48:51] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[48:52] Cameron McEwen: I tried to,

[48:52] Cameron McEwen: but the whole idea that there could be a New Science of these kinds of ideas was just met with...

[49:01] Cameron McEwen: stony silence.

[49:04] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[49:05] Bob Dobbs: but you studied under Kuhn.

[49:07] Bob Dobbs: Were you able to discuss it with him,

[49:09] Bob Dobbs: K-U-H-N?

[49:11] Cameron McEwen: No,

[49:11] Cameron McEwen: because

[49:12] Cameron McEwen: I was too immature,

[49:15] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[49:16] Cameron McEwen: and number two,

[49:19] Cameron McEwen: his interests were completely different from mine at that time.

[49:25] Cameron McEwen: I was greatly influenced by the guy because

[49:29] Cameron McEwen: And in order,

[49:30] Cameron McEwen: because he was my advisor in my junior year,

[49:34] Cameron McEwen: I had to read Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

[49:37] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[49:38] Cameron McEwen: Which he had,

[49:39] Cameron McEwen: that was in 1965,

[49:44] Cameron McEwen: I think he was my advisor.

[49:47] Cameron McEwen: So the Structure book was published by him in 1962.

[49:52] Cameron McEwen: So it was fairly recent at the time.

[49:56] Cameron McEwen: and it wasn't a...

[49:57] Cameron McEwen: yet a bestseller.

[49:59] Cameron McEwen: It became a book that sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies,

[50:05] Cameron McEwen: but in those years,

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: it only was selling hundreds of copies a year.

[50:11] Cameron McEwen: People weren't influenced by it very much yet.

[50:14] Bob Dobbs: That's when you were at Princeton?

[50:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[50:17] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[50:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[50:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[50:19] Bob Dobbs: So you're going to say one more sentence?

[50:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[50:21] Cameron McEwen: I was going to say

[50:23] Cameron McEwen: I had to read that book in order to sort of talk to

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: Kuhn. And that book is very much involved with our conversation now.

[50:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[50:36] Cameron McEwen: Because when you asked me about chemistry,

[50:39] Cameron McEwen: we're talking about a scientific revolution.

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: uh,

[50:45] Cameron McEwen: The whole question is,

[50:47] Cameron McEwen: how does a scientific revolution come about,

[50:50] Cameron McEwen: and what are its effects?

[50:52] Cameron McEwen: And how that applies to all of our conversations is,

[50:57] Cameron McEwen: we're talking about New Science,

[50:59] Cameron McEwen: and the question is,

[51:01] Cameron McEwen: how does New Science come about,

[51:04] Cameron McEwen: and if it can come about,

[51:05] Cameron McEwen: what will be its effects?

[51:07] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[51:08] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[51:08] Bob Dobbs: so the,

[51:10] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you just...

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: For people to get that with chemistry,

[51:14] Bob Dobbs: you start to look at,

[51:17] Bob Dobbs: is it visual space,

[51:18] Bob Dobbs: substances,

[51:19] Bob Dobbs: and putting it into a common page,

[51:21] Bob Dobbs: a common chart?

[51:22] Bob Dobbs: Is that,

[51:23] Bob Dobbs: it was the organizing of the new substances that their experiments discovered?

[51:29] Bob Dobbs: That's what you mean by chemical elements?

[51:33] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[51:34] Cameron McEwen: in part.

[51:35] Cameron McEwen: Remember that when we look back to what was going on,

[51:43] Cameron McEwen: let's say around 1800,

[51:46] Cameron McEwen: we're doing a kind of history work.

[51:49] Cameron McEwen: And history work always reflects a certain point of view or a certain environment,

[51:59] Cameron McEwen: a certain context.

[52:00] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about is a way of looking at that history that is itself visual.

[52:08] Cameron McEwen: And that visual emphasis...

[52:13] Cameron McEwen: at the time that got multiplied throughout the course of the 19th century produced the modern world with all of its great advantages and all of its tremendous problems.

[52:26] Cameron McEwen: But there are other ways of looking at that history.

[52:29] Cameron McEwen: So we should,

[52:31] Cameron McEwen: especially if we're trying to introduce New Science,

[52:34] Cameron McEwen: we need to be careful about the difference between a history and the history.

[52:41] Cameron McEwen: When we're doing the history,

[52:43] Cameron McEwen: we're within the confines of New Science,

[52:47] Cameron McEwen: and there things are always going up at the same time that they're going down.

[52:53] Cameron McEwen: Things are always going backwards at the same time that they're going up.

[52:58] Cameron McEwen: And so history in that sense is very much more complicated than just a linear movement towards organization.

[53:08] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[53:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: So...

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: I can immediately see that McLuhan looked at new information and its mixture,

[53:18] Bob Dobbs: which he called media.

[53:19] Bob Dobbs: So they were larger.

[53:22] Bob Dobbs: It was a larger chemistry,

[53:24] Bob Dobbs: a larger physics,

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: wouldn't you say?

[53:27] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[53:28] Bob Dobbs: So explain how,

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: what's the revolution there?

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would call it a Copernican revolution almost.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: Well.

[53:37] Bob Dobbs: Compared to...

[53:38] Bob Dobbs: chemistry,

[53:38] Bob Dobbs: like there is chemical elements are tabulated,

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: then McLuhan makes a chart of the new larger mixture of substance,

[53:48] Bob Dobbs: which are mediums.

[53:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[53:50] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[53:50] Cameron McEwen: but remember that it sounds to me like when you're talking about a mixture of substances,

[53:57] Cameron McEwen: it sounds to me like you are emphasizing the substances rather than the middle.

[54:04] Cameron McEwen: And what McLuhan,

[54:05] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan says the medium is the message,

[54:07] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is saying that the medium between the substances is actually what makes the substances,

[54:17] Cameron McEwen: not the reverse.

[54:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[54:20] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan is saying that if you make this somersault in thought and think about the middle,

[54:27] Cameron McEwen: that is to say the media,

[54:30] Cameron McEwen: then you can see how to conceptualize this space.

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: so there's the difference.

[54:36] Bob Dobbs: Quite different from chemistry.

[54:37] Bob Dobbs: That's looking at the substances,

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: and they're missing the interval.

[54:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[54:42] Bob Dobbs: wasn't Claude Bernard,

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: he discovered the interior landscape,

[54:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan thought.

[54:48] Bob Dobbs: He started to intuit the electric middle,

[54:51] Bob Dobbs: would you say?

[54:52] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: but all he did was begin to talk about the interior landscape.

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: just use the

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: the phrase.

[55:05] Cameron McEwen: So it would be wrong to say that he discovered it first because the interior landscape has always been active and always will be active.

[55:16] Cameron McEwen: So what

[55:18] Cameron McEwen: Bernard did was use a phrase that then became useful as a way of looking at what the contemporaneous poets in France were doing.

[55:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[55:33] Bob Dobbs: the way it's pointing to the middle.

[55:36] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[55:37] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[55:39] Bob Dobbs: So the middle gets more and more noticed by,

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: made by scientists,

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: noticed by the poets.

[55:47] Bob Dobbs: Then McLuhan charts it out.

[55:50] Bob Dobbs: So what do we have with McLuhan?

[55:52] Bob Dobbs: Is it applied knowledge?

[55:55] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[55:55] Cameron McEwen: it could be applied knowledge,

[55:57] Cameron McEwen: but right now it's not knowledge at all in the sense of something shared.

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:02] Cameron McEwen: It's just right now it's just marks on a page or...

[56:06] Cameron McEwen: a voice on tapes or a face in video,

[56:11] Cameron McEwen: all of which McLuhan left and which is left to the future to learn from.

[56:19] Cameron McEwen: And it's what we are trying to do,

[56:21] Cameron McEwen: at least in my perspective,

[56:23] Cameron McEwen: what we are trying to do is we're trying to expose a

[56:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that is not known,

[56:30] Cameron McEwen: but a McLuhan...

[56:35] Cameron McEwen: whose potential communication to us is what he called the key to the modern world.

[56:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: and your title of your blog,

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's New Sciences,

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: is very apt because he told me through the Evergreens,

[56:51] Bob Dobbs: I like to go into the artistic and the Menippean satire part of himself,

[56:54] Bob Dobbs: but he pointed out to me that,

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[56:57] Bob Dobbs: my real desire was to get a science started,

[57:02] Bob Dobbs: a New Science.

[57:03] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[57:03] Bob Dobbs: I want to be known as a scientist.

[57:05] Bob Dobbs: not in the old sense,

[57:06] Bob Dobbs: but he was romanticized by the aesthetes in the 60s and 70s as a poet.

[57:13] Bob Dobbs: They didn't get the science part of him,

[57:15] Bob Dobbs: and that's what he wanted to know,

[57:17] Bob Dobbs: wanted to be,

[57:18] Bob Dobbs: and he failed in getting anybody else really getting that.

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: But you're starting it or developing it,

[57:26] Bob Dobbs: and you got the right title,

[57:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's New Sciences,

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: right?

[57:30] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[57:31] Cameron McEwen: well,

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: lately my post...

[57:34] Cameron McEwen: are all about what I call a new genus of sciences.

[57:42] Cameron McEwen: I haven't used that phrase in posts that have been published,

[57:46] Cameron McEwen: but

[57:47] Cameron McEwen: I'm working on three or four different posts.

[57:52] Cameron McEwen: I'm always working on multiple posts at the same time,

[57:55] Cameron McEwen: and the posts that I'm working on,

[57:58] Cameron McEwen: the multiple posts,

[57:59] Cameron McEwen: have to do with a new genus of sciences.

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: G-E-N-U-S.

[58:06] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[58:07] Bob Dobbs: And what does that word mean?

[58:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[58:12] Cameron McEwen: a new species of science would be a sibling to existing sciences.

[58:19] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan,

[58:20] Cameron McEwen: all of the existing sciences belong to a single genus.

[58:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[58:25] Cameron McEwen: So a genus is a wider family than a species.

[58:29] Cameron McEwen: So the genus of...

[58:37] Cameron McEwen: of the intellection of the Western tradition is what McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy.

[58:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[58:45] Cameron McEwen: that's a genus.

[58:46] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[58:47] Cameron McEwen: And he wanted to point out that there are other galaxies.

[58:52] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[58:52] Cameron McEwen: these other galaxies can be called genera,

[58:56] Cameron McEwen: that is the plural of genus.

[58:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[58:58] Cameron McEwen: So the whole idea that there are other ways of

[59:04] Cameron McEwen: experiencing the world and of approaching the world scientifically,

[59:12] Cameron McEwen: that's a very difficult thing to do because of the invisibility of these other genera.

[59:22] Cameron McEwen: So the reason that at the start of this conversation,

[59:25] Cameron McEwen: the reason that we got into the scientific revolution around 1800 was that

[59:32] Cameron McEwen: At that time,

[59:33] Cameron McEwen: you had a...

[59:34] Cameron McEwen: an environment that was active and always had been active,

[59:39] Cameron McEwen: but it was invisible,

[59:42] Cameron McEwen: completely invisible.

[59:43] Cameron McEwen: Nobody knew anything about it.

[59:45] Cameron McEwen: But in the 200 years since,

[59:48] Cameron McEwen: the whole of modern world and every one of its aspects has been developed out of that environment that gradually became visible,

[1:00:00] Cameron McEwen: an environment that was already there but unknown.

[1:00:04] Cameron McEwen: So according to McLuhan,

[1:00:05] Cameron McEwen: the reason that it's so important to look at the development of literacy in Greece or the development of printing in Germany or the development of chemical elements in France,

[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: the reason those revolutions are so important for McLuhan is that they are applicable to the present.

[1:00:25] Cameron McEwen: We are undergoing a scientific revolution as we speak,

[1:00:29] Cameron McEwen: but it's in regard to an environment that's invisible.

[1:00:33] Cameron McEwen: And what is the invisible environment?

[1:00:35] Cameron McEwen: The invisible environment is the role of media in the creation of...

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: human history.

[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: someone like Sheldrake's morphogenetic field,

[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: he is discussing,

[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: he's tapping into McLuhan's New Science without proper preparation via McLuhan.

[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: Do you agree?

[1:00:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't know anything about him.

[1:01:01] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:01:02] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:01:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:01:02] Bob Dobbs: there's these different efforts at making a New Science,

[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: which regular science didn't,

[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: old science didn't like.

[1:01:10] Bob Dobbs: It was too woo-woo sounding.

[1:01:12] Bob Dobbs: And Sheldrake's...

[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: morphogenetic field,

[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: maybe you can look it up,

[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: is a prime example that a lot of people since the 80s refer to or quote when trying to talk about,

[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: we know as tactile space.

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: But they put it into a lot of weird often they fall into astral or psychic references or occult references.

[1:01:36] Bob Dobbs: But it's a material.

[1:01:41] Bob Dobbs: They miss that part,

[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: the material interplay of cause and effect in this invisible.

[1:01:46] Bob Dobbs: But you see,

[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: one effect of the electric environment is people,

[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: they begin to notice there's something invisible.

[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: They didn't notice that before.

[1:01:55] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:01:58] Cameron McEwen: when an environment is emerging out of its invisibility,

[1:02:04] Cameron McEwen: all sorts of people have a sense of this and make attempts to articulate it.

[1:02:11] Cameron McEwen: But the great problem that McLuhan saw was that people are continually falling back into the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[1:02:20] Cameron McEwen: and they're attempting to ground their sense of what's going on in a conceptuality that contradicts where they want to go.

[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: And this is not,

[1:02:33] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:02:34] Cameron McEwen: you can see this at the University of Toronto,

[1:02:36] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:02:37] Cameron McEwen: where people didn't understand what was going on with...

[1:02:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and rejected him and all this sort of stuff.

[1:02:43] Cameron McEwen: But this is a tempest in a teapot.

[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: For McLuhan,

[1:02:49] Cameron McEwen: the great problem is people with nuclear bombs are also confused in the same way.

[1:02:56] Cameron McEwen: And if they're allowed sort of free reign with their confused conceptuality,

[1:03:07] Cameron McEwen: we can all end up dead.

[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:03:10] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,

[1:03:11] Cameron McEwen: this was a very,

[1:03:12] Cameron McEwen: very serious business.

[1:03:14] Cameron McEwen: And what he was trying to do was communicate these things in a way that wouldn't be just a sense of the new environment.

[1:03:25] Cameron McEwen: It would actually illuminate the new environment.

[1:03:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: There were several great difficulties involved in this.

[1:03:34] Cameron McEwen: One of them is the direction of illumination.

[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: What McLuhan said was...

[1:03:40] Cameron McEwen: The direction of illumination is to us,

[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: not from us.

[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: And it's very,

[1:03:46] Cameron McEwen: very,

[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: very difficult for people to make that turn from,

[1:03:53] Cameron McEwen: it's coming to me and I must accord with it,

[1:03:57] Cameron McEwen: rather than it's coming from me and it must accord with me.

[1:04:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: that gets into psychobabble,

[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: the from me.

[1:04:06] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:04:06] Cameron McEwen: not only that,

[1:04:07] Cameron McEwen: but it's when...

[1:04:09] Cameron McEwen: when there's nothing that is ultimately intelligible about the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: so that the more people think about what needs to be articulated,

[1:04:21] Cameron McEwen: the more confused they get,

[1:04:23] Cameron McEwen: the more desperate they get,

[1:04:25] Cameron McEwen: and what you see as a result of that is modern society,

[1:04:31] Cameron McEwen: where nobody knows what the hell is going on with anything.

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: would you call...

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: here's a question.

[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: He called the electric environment the new,

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: beyond Gutenberg,

[1:04:42] Bob Dobbs: as a Marconi Galaxy.

[1:04:44] Bob Dobbs: Would you use that term?

[1:04:45] Bob Dobbs: Are we in a third level,

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: a digital galaxy,

[1:04:50] Bob Dobbs: but we might have a term for it than digital?

[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: Or do you think what we're in now is included by the phrase Marconi Galaxy?

[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: remember that the only galaxies that are worth talking about have always been Thank you.

[1:05:08] Cameron McEwen: active.

[1:05:10] Cameron McEwen: So if we talk about coming into a galaxy,

[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: it's not that the galaxy itself is new,

[1:05:18] Cameron McEwen: it's that our awareness of the galaxy is new.

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: Does Marconi help us?

[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: Does that help us articulate what we know?

[1:05:31] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:05:32] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[1:05:35] Cameron McEwen: I already talked about the difficulty involved in

[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: turning to illumination rather than trying to cause illumination.

[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: But another great difficulty is the following.

[1:05:47] Cameron McEwen: If the electric is essentially tactile space in the middle,

[1:05:56] Cameron McEwen: if the electric is the intuition of the importance of media as middles,

[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: then

[1:06:09] Cameron McEwen: The idea that the electric goes beyond the visual doesn't work,

[1:06:19] Cameron McEwen: because if the electric is opposed to the visual,

[1:06:22] Cameron McEwen: that's no longer electric.

[1:06:24] Cameron McEwen: That's no longer tactile.

[1:06:26] Cameron McEwen: That's falling back into the visual.

[1:06:30] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:06:32] Cameron McEwen: So the great problem for the articulation of these...

[1:06:38] Cameron McEwen: spaces or of these galaxies is that the articulation needs to be what McLuhan called inclusive.

[1:06:51] Cameron McEwen: The articulation cannot exclude the visual and the audile spaces from tactile space.

[1:07:01] Cameron McEwen: Tactile space is the awareness of not only the value.

[1:07:07] Cameron McEwen: visual and audile space.

[1:07:09] Cameron McEwen: It's the awareness of their reality.

[1:07:13] Cameron McEwen: And the great complexity here is that people want to have a basis in their life that is stable.

[1:07:24] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan is pulling the carpet out from under that and he's saying,

[1:07:27] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: reality itself is unstable.

[1:07:31] Cameron McEwen: Reality itself is this kind of play of spaces which Thank you.

[1:07:36] Cameron McEwen: can never be brought into some sort of unity.

[1:07:42] Cameron McEwen: Reality itself is plural.

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: it can't be brought into a homogeneity.

[1:07:47] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: so looking at your three types of space,

[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: now you've described what you write,

[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: but I will just repeat some of the sentences to show that you've been saying what you wrote.

[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: You say all experience is some ratio of visual,

[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: audio,

[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: that's hyphenated,

[1:08:09] Bob Dobbs: visual,

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: audio,

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: space,

[1:08:11] Bob Dobbs: where the hyphen or frontier or resonant interval is tactility.

[1:08:15] Bob Dobbs: So the middle,

[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: the hyphen between visual and audio is tactility.

[1:08:19] Bob Dobbs: Then you have three quotes.

[1:08:21] Bob Dobbs: You quote from

[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's Through the Vanishing Point,

[1:08:24] Bob Dobbs: page 221.

[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: The world of touch,

[1:08:27] Bob Dobbs: whether passive or active,

[1:08:28] Bob Dobbs: creates a relation not of connectedness but of interval.

[1:08:33] Bob Dobbs: That's what the word touch does.

[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: So it's not the contact or kinetic pressure part of touch.

[1:08:39] Bob Dobbs: It's the ineffable.

[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: Then part two,

[1:08:45] Bob Dobbs: your second example,

[1:08:47] Bob Dobbs: is from

[1:08:48] Bob Dobbs: Bruce Powers' book,

[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: Global Village.

[1:08:51] Bob Dobbs: The Global Village.

[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: And you have the quote,

[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: the resonant interval may be considered an invisible borderline.

[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: it's not a visual,

[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: visible borderline.

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: Invisible borderline between visual and acoustic space.

[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: And then again from Global Village,

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: that quote was page four.

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: Then on page 13,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: you say,

[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: touch or tactility is the resonant interval or frontier of change and process and is indispensable for the study of technological effects.

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: So basically,

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: you're repeating yourself with a slight nuance to push it along into a clearer view of the invisible middle in those three quotes.

[1:09:33] Bob Dobbs: And then you redo it again.

[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: You say,

[1:09:37] Bob Dobbs: the play of this threefold unfolds as follows.

[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: And I'm not going to go into that,

[1:09:44] Bob Dobbs: but you talk about the tetrad,

[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: and anybody can read the details.

[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: But it always comes back.

[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: Let's see how you end it.

[1:09:56] Bob Dobbs: You quote,

[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: the bias of our,

[1:09:59] Bob Dobbs: this is from Counterblast,

[1:10:00] Bob Dobbs: page 64,

[1:10:00] Bob Dobbs: 1969.

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: The bias of our culture is precisely to isolate the bias of all others in an effort at orchestration.

[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: So the effort at orchestration is the bias of our time.

[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: I call that the tetrad manager.

[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: Then you say,

[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: it is,

[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: the medium that is the message,

[1:10:19] Bob Dobbs: unquote,

[1:10:19] Bob Dobbs: also known as the interface that is the basis,

[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: also known as the medium is the message,

[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: is also known as,

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: the gap itself that is the bond of being.

[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: Also known as tactile space,

[1:10:35] Bob Dobbs: so those one,

[1:10:37] Bob Dobbs: two,

[1:10:38] Bob Dobbs: three,

[1:10:38] Bob Dobbs: four.

[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: or five,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: one,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: two,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: three,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: four,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: that,

[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: according to McLuhan,

[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: those four,

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: provides the focus needed to spark this inaugurating event.

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: Then you say,

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: quoting

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: Joyce, Mallarmé and the Press,

[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: that's an interior landscape,

[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: 1953 or so,

[1:11:02] Bob Dobbs: you say,

[1:11:02] Bob Dobbs: every medium of communication is a unique art form which gives salience to one set of human Thank you.

[1:11:08] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: visual,

[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: audile possibilities,

[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: and then in brackets,

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: as determined by the tactile interface of their hyphen at the expense of another set.

[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: So it gives salience to one set at the expense of another set.

[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: Each medium of expression profoundly modifies human sensibility in many unconscious and unpredictable ways.

[1:11:29] Bob Dobbs: Then you end by saying,

[1:11:32] Bob Dobbs: the moment man accepts himself as an object,

[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: he is free to encounter a multiplicity of spaces.

[1:11:38] Bob Dobbs: created by himself and his technologies.

[1:11:41] Bob Dobbs: It is the environments and unique spaces created by man's own technologies that have to become especially the concern of the present age of ecology.

[1:11:51] Bob Dobbs: And that's from 1971,

[1:11:52] Bob Dobbs: an article called Innovation is Obsolete.

[1:11:54] Bob Dobbs: Then you have your footnotes,

[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: which,

[1:11:57] Bob Dobbs: with other words,

[1:11:57] Bob Dobbs: say the same point,

[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: but you're always emphasizing,

[1:12:02] Bob Dobbs: let's see if your final note,

[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: note 11,

[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: says it.

[1:12:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan simply has have become here in a previous sentence,

[1:12:11] Bob Dobbs: not have to become,

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: but have become,

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: rather than have to become.

[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: He was thinking chiefly the concern in anthropology to understand cultures from the inside.

[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: At the same time,

[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: however,

[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: he was acutely aware that the methods and understandings of the social sciences remained chaotically unfocused.

[1:12:30] Bob Dobbs: That concern with the inside of culture had been initiated.

[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: that concern with the inside of culture had been initiated,

[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: it was very important,

[1:12:38] Bob Dobbs: even a condition for further advance,

[1:12:40] Bob Dobbs: but such concern could not genuinely advance without collective insight into,

[1:12:44] Bob Dobbs: there it is,

[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: the elements and phenomenal manifestations of that inside,

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: another word for the middle,

[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: nor without the ongoing investigation that would result from that insight.

[1:12:58] Bob Dobbs: So you pile the words on words to...

[1:13:03] Bob Dobbs: They're like spiraling over the same insight,

[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: which begins with realizing there's visual and audible space,

[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: and there's something in between them that people are becoming more aware of in the electric age because it extended the middle.

[1:13:20] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:13:21] Cameron McEwen: So remember that what I'm trying to talk about is an environment that has always been there,

[1:13:28] Cameron McEwen: always will be there,

[1:13:30] Cameron McEwen: and is active as we speak.

[1:13:32] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:13:32] Cameron McEwen: So.

[1:13:33] Cameron McEwen: So if you think about the structure,

[1:13:39] Cameron McEwen: just a visual slash audile where the slash is tactile space,

[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: it seems obvious to me that there are many ways in which that structure can express itself.

[1:13:56] Cameron McEwen: And it was this that I tried to talk about with you when we were at Mark Stahlman's place.

[1:14:02] Cameron McEwen: the

[1:14:03] Cameron McEwen: the visual slash audile can have an emphasis on the visual.

[1:14:10] Cameron McEwen: It can also have an emphasis on the audile.

[1:14:14] Cameron McEwen: It can also have an emphasis on the middle.

[1:14:18] Cameron McEwen: And the emphasis in each one of these cases can be an extreme emphasis or a weak emphasis.

[1:14:28] Cameron McEwen: And so what you end up with,

[1:14:30] Cameron McEwen: looking at this structure,

[1:14:32] Cameron McEwen: is a kind of Mendeleev's table of the elementary ways in which human experience unfolds.

[1:14:43] Bob Dobbs: And so Understanding Media,

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: that book,

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: is Mendeleev's chart.

[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:14:52] Cameron McEwen: it's a book concerned with what happens when you look at the world in this way.

[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: So it's the effects.

[1:15:01] Cameron McEwen: of Mendeleev's chart.

[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: So did he ever produce Mendeleev's chart in a visual sense?

[1:15:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:15:11] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[1:15:13] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[1:15:14] Cameron McEwen: if you try to do it in a visual sense then you've contradicted yourself.

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:20] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:15:21] Cameron McEwen: So that doesn't work.

[1:15:22] Cameron McEwen: That's one of the problems,

[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: There's four or five central problems to doing this.

[1:15:30] Cameron McEwen: One is the individual has to turn around.

[1:15:33] Cameron McEwen: Another is that turning around induces confusion.

[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan often talked,

[1:15:41] Cameron McEwen: like Jordan Peterson does,

[1:15:43] Cameron McEwen: of the fact that identity loss results in violence.

[1:15:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: when you turn from the Gutenberg Galaxy to the

[1:15:56] Cameron McEwen: Marconi Galaxy,

[1:15:58] Cameron McEwen: you lose identity.

[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: And so it's inherent to what's going on at the present in this.

[1:16:09] Cameron McEwen: a historic change to a new environment.

[1:16:12] Cameron McEwen: Violence is inherent to it.

[1:16:15] Cameron McEwen: That's a huge problem.

[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: So let's go over to my book,

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: because how am I doing with trying to illustrate the tech body?

[1:16:28] Bob Dobbs: What is the tech body?

[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: Is that something beyond the Marconi?

[1:16:33] Bob Dobbs: Is it an awareness of something new,

[1:16:35] Bob Dobbs: a new space,

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: new elements?

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: That's what...

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: I'd be wondering as I'm reading through this how close I get to that or what do I get to that.

[1:16:47] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:16:47] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:16:48] Cameron McEwen: I think at least for me,

[1:16:50] Cameron McEwen: the central question in your book has to do with how

[1:17:01] Cameron McEwen: Trump or how contemporary events relate.

[1:17:08] Cameron McEwen: to technology in its deepest sense.

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:17:12] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:17:16] Cameron McEwen: I would say that what's interesting about the book and what's interesting about your mind in general is that you have a very highly developed intuition.

[1:17:33] Cameron McEwen: So you've known for,

[1:17:35] Cameron McEwen: I would say,

[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: at least 50 years.

[1:17:37] Cameron McEwen: years that something was going on you had to articulate and you just kept doing it like a bulldog that's right and and that's that's uh very interesting so your

[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: pamphlet here is just one of the latest attempts to continue doing that that's right and McLuhan was like that he was a bulldog

[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: as he acted out or mimed the post-visual communication.

[1:18:11] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:18:12] Bob Dobbs: the Marconi communication.

[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: He was a bulldog who was very sick for the last

[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: 20 years of his life and who was mocked by many of his colleagues and was not able to talk to his own children.

[1:18:35] Cameron McEwen: whose books were,

[1:18:40] Cameron McEwen: up until the middle

[1:18:44] Cameron McEwen: 60s, his books were always rejected by people.

[1:18:49] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:18:51] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had a much more difficult life than is generally known.

[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: And I've had a very easy life compared to the struggles he had.

[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: because I always had a partner who had great health cures.

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:19:12] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:19:13] Bob Dobbs: So he had a lot of health,

[1:19:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:19:15] Bob Dobbs: stresses and strains.

[1:19:16] Bob Dobbs: It caused all these health problems.

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: He had no proper knowledge around him to alleviate the physical strains he was going through.

[1:19:24] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:19:25] Cameron McEwen: But notice that

[1:19:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan did have a wonderful wife.

[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:19:31] Cameron McEwen: And that's,

[1:19:32] Cameron McEwen: and it was.

[1:19:34] Cameron McEwen: Corinne that provided the sort of a material basis,

[1:19:40] Cameron McEwen: if you will,

[1:19:41] Cameron McEwen: that looked after everything that needed to be looked after to keep just concrete life going.

[1:19:50] Cameron McEwen: She did all of that,

[1:19:52] Cameron McEwen: and she was able to let Marshall know that she greatly appreciated his work.

[1:20:04] Cameron McEwen: But she wanted him to press on with it further.

[1:20:08] Cameron McEwen: There were aspects to it and to his personality which were only funny.

[1:20:15] Cameron McEwen: Corinne was able to show

[1:20:17] Cameron McEwen: Marshall that there were stupid things that he was doing,

[1:20:22] Cameron McEwen: but that was okay.

[1:20:24] Cameron McEwen: Did you say funny?

[1:20:25] Bob Dobbs: You said funny.

[1:20:28] Cameron McEwen: Funny and stupid.

[1:20:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:20:31] Cameron McEwen: And that's a wonderful thing.

[1:20:33] Cameron McEwen: to have your balloon punctured but in a way that

[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: you can keep going.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:42] Bob Dobbs: She was a good doctor for him with the knowledge they had in that day.

[1:20:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:50] Cameron McEwen: She was a very different kind of doctor than your wife.

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: But for him,

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: he would have died without her a long time ago.

[1:21:01] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:21:02] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:21:03] Bob Dobbs: Because he wanted to be a family man.

[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: She used to say he was in love with the idea of being a family man,

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: but he wasn't too good at it.

[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: He was too driven.

[1:21:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:21:15] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:21:16] Cameron McEwen: he liked the idea of being a family man,

[1:21:19] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't have time for it.

[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: I was just saying that somebody asked me,

[1:21:28] Bob Dobbs: or someone brought up something,

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: and I said,

[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: you remind me of...

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: Someone I knew when I was very young,

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: and then they came and visited us in Toronto,

[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: and,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: when we were adults and all that.

[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: And at one point I was with her by myself,

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: and she said,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: how come you and Carol never had any children?

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: we were too busy.

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: We had too many things to do.

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: So we had the alibi that McLuhan had.

[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: We didn't even get to have any.

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: He had children,

[1:21:56] Bob Dobbs: but no time for them.

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: We didn't even get to having children.

[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: We eventually got twin foster twins when they were 16,

[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: so that was a good time.

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: It was all past the growing pains,

[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: so to speak,

[1:22:12] Bob Dobbs: of babies and stuff.

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: But the iON points out of that big complementary assistant to

[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, which was very necessary,

[1:22:23] Bob Dobbs: was Marge Stewart.

[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: She was the perfect secretary for him and dictaphone.

[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you know much about her.

[1:22:31] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:22:31] Cameron McEwen: I don't.

[1:22:32] Cameron McEwen: You've often mentioned her and you've often mentioned how important she was for McLuhan,

[1:22:38] Cameron McEwen: but I never met her.

[1:22:39] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:22:41] Cameron McEwen: I know that somebody had to make sense of his notes,

[1:22:47] Cameron McEwen: his dictaphone stuff.

[1:22:49] Cameron McEwen: Somebody had to correct his spelling and his sentences.

[1:22:53] Cameron McEwen: And so that was probably her.

[1:22:55] Bob Dobbs: It was.

[1:22:56] Bob Dobbs: iON makes a big deal out of her.

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: Understanding of McLuhan,

[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: at least to get it down right and to correct where he was sloppy.

[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: Because a lot of it was repeated,

[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: so she knew it very well.

[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: So she knew what he was saying all the time and kept it very perfect.

[1:23:15] Bob Dobbs: And so

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: I give her a lot of credit for the creativity in the Coach House.

[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan,

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: he needed that kind of support no matter where he was.

[1:23:27] Bob Dobbs: At home.

[1:23:28] Bob Dobbs: He had Corinne.

[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: At work,

[1:23:31] Bob Dobbs: he had Marge.

[1:23:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:32] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:23:33] Cameron McEwen: everybody who wants to think creatively,

[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: where there is an inherent sort of imbalance,

[1:23:46] Cameron McEwen: that imbalance needs to be offset in some other way or some other ways.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:23:55] Cameron McEwen: And so what we're talking about are the other ways in which

[1:23:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's inherent imbalance was offset.

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: What was the last of the words?

[1:24:07] Cameron McEwen: Offset.

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: Offset,

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: right.

[1:24:10] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:24:10] Bob Dobbs: that's correct.

[1:24:11] Bob Dobbs: So on page 130,

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: that's if you get your book up there,

[1:24:17] Bob Dobbs: your copy,

[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: we do the middle.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: I think we did in the middle the important quote from Counterblast,

[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: page 135,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: and no matter how many walls have fallen,

[1:24:33] Bob Dobbs: the citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen,

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: nor is it likely to fall,

[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: for it is not accessible to the mass media.

[1:24:42] Bob Dobbs: I think we did that,

[1:24:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:24:45] Cameron McEwen: we talked about it briefly,

[1:24:46] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:24:47] Cameron McEwen: I want to read you a passage that I...

[1:24:53] Cameron McEwen: found,

[1:24:54] Cameron McEwen: I'm just looking for it now.

[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: here we go.

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: Here we go.

[1:25:09] Cameron McEwen: Your passage talks about the individual consciousness and how it's not accessible to mass media.

[1:25:21] Cameron McEwen: And if you recall,

[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: we've also talked about pre-tribal awareness.

[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: So in your quotation here from Counterblast,

[1:25:31] Cameron McEwen: mass media is something like a tribal environment.

[1:25:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:25:39] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:25:39] Cameron McEwen: So because we're talking about something that is inaccessible to a tribal environment,

[1:25:46] Cameron McEwen: to mass media and for a tribal environment,

[1:25:52] Cameron McEwen: I found several quotations from 1970 that talked about how when literature was introduced around the time of

[1:26:06] Cameron McEwen: Plato, that.

[1:26:11] Cameron McEwen: this recalled,

[1:26:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan said,

[1:26:14] Cameron McEwen: metaphysical man or pre-tribal awareness.

[1:26:18] Bob Dobbs: Did you send these to me?

[1:26:21] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: So I should be able to find them.

[1:26:25] Cameron McEwen: We talked about those.

[1:26:26] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure if it was in the last discussion or before that,

[1:26:30] Cameron McEwen: but we talked about the fact that in your book you have the

[1:26:37] Cameron McEwen: that quotation from

[1:26:39] Cameron McEwen: Rolling Stone in

[1:26:41] Cameron McEwen: 1970 or 71.

[1:26:45] Cameron McEwen: Seventy.

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: 70.

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:26:47] Cameron McEwen: And then I found

[1:26:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan himself talking about pre-tribal awareness in letters,

[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: one to Joe Keogh,

[1:26:56] Cameron McEwen: and

[1:26:57] Cameron McEwen: I forget who the other one was written to.

[1:27:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:27:00] Bob Dobbs: let me see.

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: I see that.

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: I do have your Keogh.

[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: So I found the quote.

[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: So go ahead and...

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: Read them.

[1:27:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:27:08] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:27:09] Cameron McEwen: So what I know,

[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: but what I want to read to you is a quotation from 1943.

[1:27:19] Cameron McEwen: So this is 30 years before.

[1:27:22] Cameron McEwen: And I believe that

[1:27:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan already in his

[1:27:26] Cameron McEwen: Nashe thesis saw the point at issue.

[1:27:30] Cameron McEwen: Here's what he says.

[1:27:32] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[1:27:33] Cameron McEwen: just as language offers an extensive.

[1:27:37] Cameron McEwen: and complex apprehension of the structure of beings so that faculty which produced the state of language is perpetually operative,

[1:27:50] Cameron McEwen: an intuitive perception of essentials.

[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:27:57] Cameron McEwen: So what he is saying here in 1943 is that human beings have a sense that is

[1:28:06] Cameron McEwen: Prior to language.

[1:28:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:28:10] Cameron McEwen: And I believe it's amazing that he had that idea so early.

[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:28:16] Bob Dobbs: And how did you find that?

[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: You got everything.

[1:28:18] Bob Dobbs: You can scan everything.

[1:28:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:28:22] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:28:24] Cameron McEwen: I have lots of stuff that I can search through,

[1:28:28] Cameron McEwen: but that's not how I found this.

[1:28:31] Cameron McEwen: I kind of forget how I found this.

[1:28:33] Cameron McEwen: I was.

[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: looking for something else and

[1:28:43] Cameron McEwen: I found a passage in the

[1:28:48] Cameron McEwen: Nashe thesis that was more or less what I was looking for and then just by chance on the same page

[1:28:56] Cameron McEwen: I saw this Wow so I wasn't looking for it but it was looking for me yeah yeah what is that illumination to

[1:29:06] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:29:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: rather than from.

[1:29:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: so read it again.

[1:29:12] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:29:12] Cameron McEwen: just as language,

[1:29:13] Cameron McEwen: and we should,

[1:29:16] Cameron McEwen: with each part of the sentence,

[1:29:18] Cameron McEwen: we should do a short commentary.

[1:29:20] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me.

[1:29:22] Cameron McEwen: Just as language offers an extensive and complex apprehension of the structure of beings.

[1:29:30] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is saying there is that every language,

[1:29:33] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't matter if it's...

[1:29:35] Cameron McEwen: Swahili or it's Hawaiian or it's English,

[1:29:40] Cameron McEwen: but every language structures the environment in a certain way and gives you access to the environment in a certain way.

[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: now read it again with those words in mind.

[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: just as language offers an extensive and complex apprehension of the structure of beings.

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Great,

[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: from that language.

[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: in that particular language.

[1:30:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:07] Cameron McEwen: And so notice,

[1:30:08] Cameron McEwen: and what's important to see there is nobody invents language.

[1:30:14] Cameron McEwen: The language is already there.

[1:30:18] Cameron McEwen: And so when a child learns language,

[1:30:22] Cameron McEwen: they learn this extensive and complex apprehension of the structure of beings.

[1:30:29] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:30:29] Cameron McEwen: So the child in learning language is introduced to you

[1:30:34] Cameron McEwen: a certain order of the world.

[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:30:39] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:30:40] Cameron McEwen: so then McLuhan says language is already there and it already has this structure of the world built into it.

[1:30:55] Cameron McEwen: So he says that.

[1:30:57] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: so he didn't say that.

[1:30:59] Bob Dobbs: That's what you're translating.

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: So now you're going to read the second sentence.

[1:31:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:31:03] Cameron McEwen: so it's the second clause of this.

[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:31:08] Cameron McEwen: Same sentence.

[1:31:09] Cameron McEwen: This is all one sentence.

[1:31:11] Cameron McEwen: So at the start of the first clause,

[1:31:13] Cameron McEwen: he says,

[1:31:14] Cameron McEwen: just as language.

[1:31:16] Cameron McEwen: And so now he's going to say,

[1:31:18] Cameron McEwen: so that faculty,

[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: So the thing about just as language is that it's already there and it already offers a complex apprehension.

[1:31:31] Cameron McEwen: So he says,

[1:31:32] Cameron McEwen: just as language,

[1:31:33] Cameron McEwen: so that faculty,

[1:31:35] Cameron McEwen: which produced this state of language.

[1:31:37] Cameron McEwen: is perpetually active,

[1:31:40] Cameron McEwen: operative.

[1:31:41] Cameron McEwen: So language is already there,

[1:31:44] Cameron McEwen: and it already offers this sort of window into the world.

[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: To you.

[1:31:51] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: to you.

[1:31:53] Cameron McEwen: But in order for that to be possible,

[1:31:57] Cameron McEwen: says McLuhan,

[1:31:58] Cameron McEwen: so that faculty which produce this state of language is perpetually operative.

[1:32:04] Cameron McEwen: So there has to be a window onto the world that is prior to the window of the world that is language that allows language to be learned in the first place and then to be used.

[1:32:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: with those words in mind,

[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: read the second clause.

[1:32:23] Cameron McEwen: The second clause is so,

[1:32:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:32:26] Cameron McEwen: just as language,

[1:32:27] Cameron McEwen: so that faculty which produced this state of language is perpetually operative.

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: Is that the end of the sentence?

[1:32:38] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:32:38] Cameron McEwen: Then there's a dash.

[1:32:41] Cameron McEwen: And then he sums up what that is,

[1:32:45] Cameron McEwen: an intuitive perception of essentials.

[1:32:50] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[1:32:50] Cameron McEwen: what does he mean by essentials?

[1:32:52] Cameron McEwen: He means that when language gives us a window onto the world,

[1:33:02] Cameron McEwen: it gives us...

[1:33:03] Cameron McEwen: a window onto a world that's structured in various ways.

[1:33:08] Cameron McEwen: And the structure of things,

[1:33:10] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,

[1:33:11] Cameron McEwen: the form of things,

[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: can be called its essentials.

[1:33:15] Cameron McEwen: So essential and form and structure all belong together.

[1:33:19] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan is saying that it belongs to human beings to have an intuitive.

[1:33:26] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[1:33:26] Cameron McEwen: it's not instructive.

[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: It's not something that is subject to education.

[1:33:32] Cameron McEwen: It's something that's...

[1:33:33] Cameron McEwen: already there and already active,

[1:33:36] Cameron McEwen: and it's that which allows human beings to learn language and thereby become human beings.

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: the essentials are in the middle.

[1:33:47] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:33:47] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: This faculty,

[1:33:51] Cameron McEwen: which is perpetually operative,

[1:33:57] Cameron McEwen: that's

[1:33:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan around this time would have called that logos.

[1:34:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:34:01] Cameron McEwen: And so the

[1:34:02] Cameron McEwen: The logos is something that's active outside of us,

[1:34:07] Cameron McEwen: but we also have a kind of shadowy faculty that's related to that big L logos.

[1:34:16] Cameron McEwen: Call it small L logos.

[1:34:18] Cameron McEwen: And that small L logos is what ties us to the world.

[1:34:26] Cameron McEwen: And insofar as it's a tie,

[1:34:29] Cameron McEwen: it is a medium.

[1:34:31] Cameron McEwen: it's

[1:34:33] Cameron McEwen: one possible media.

[1:34:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: and that is,

[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in Catholic Humanism,

[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:34:39] Bob Dobbs: if it wasn't inside us,

[1:34:41] Bob Dobbs: we wouldn't be able to know it.

[1:34:43] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: That's a simple way of saying,

[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: summing up what you said,

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: what you're quoting.

[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: But you can see in some other articles on Wehroff that he wrote in that time,

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: he talks about being.

[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: For him,

[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: being is that middle space.

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about being,

[1:35:08] Cameron McEwen: B-E-I-N-G?

[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: He talked about the non-being of non-being.

[1:35:15] Bob Dobbs: He used the word being and something else,

[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: but it's being and something else,

[1:35:19] Bob Dobbs: reality or nature or something.

[1:35:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:35:21] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:35:21] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:35:22] Cameron McEwen: So the interesting thing,

[1:35:25] Cameron McEwen: and this is yet another problem that is in the way of this turn that we're talking about,

[1:35:31] Cameron McEwen: another great problem that's...

[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: stands in the way of this,

[1:35:38] Cameron McEwen: the illumination and practice of New Science is that

[1:35:47] Cameron McEwen: the sort of the central characteristic of being is that it gives itself up.

[1:35:56] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:35:57] Cameron McEwen: Christ on the cross is one articulation of this insight.

[1:36:02] Cameron McEwen: And it is that human beings are not related to being through matching or through merger.

[1:36:15] Cameron McEwen: Human beings are set free to have diverse relationships to being.

[1:36:22] Cameron McEwen: So being is not something that insists on being glued.

[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: It's a dynamism.

[1:36:31] Cameron McEwen: It opens itself freely even to its own denial.

[1:36:39] Bob Dobbs: Hendiadys,

[1:36:40] Bob Dobbs: one by means of two,

[1:36:42] Cameron McEwen: but it includes the third,

[1:36:44] Bob Dobbs: the middle.

[1:36:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:36:45] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.

[1:36:46] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:36:47] Cameron McEwen: So that's the structure of being.

[1:36:54] Cameron McEwen: It's just what you were saying there,

[1:36:56] Cameron McEwen: that the one,

[1:37:01] Cameron McEwen: in order to be,

[1:37:03] Cameron McEwen: outers itself as two.

[1:37:06] Cameron McEwen: And the relationship between the one and the two is a third.

[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: So until you get that.

[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan doesn't make sense,

[1:37:14] Bob Dobbs: especially his

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: 40s writing.

[1:37:17] Bob Dobbs: Very hard to understand.

[1:37:19] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:37:20] Cameron McEwen: But what's interesting about the

[1:37:23] Cameron McEwen: 40s writing is that for McLuhan himself,

[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: those writings had to be interrogated.

[1:37:31] Cameron McEwen: He himself didn't understand entirely what the hell he was talking about.

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: And so he thought he had to discover something new,

[1:37:40] Bob Dobbs: which was in it.

[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: Innis was a great help to

[1:37:47] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan to understanding this stuff.

[1:37:50] Bob Dobbs: That's what I meant,

[1:37:51] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:37:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:37:54] Bob Dobbs: He thought he was discovering something new.

[1:37:56] Bob Dobbs: He was just getting a way to clarify what he'd already been saying.

[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: in a certain way,

[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: but it's not as if...

[1:38:08] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:38:08] Cameron McEwen: it would be very Gutenbergian to say it was all there and nothing new ever happened.

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:38:14] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan's thinking,

[1:38:16] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:38:16] Cameron McEwen: new stuff was happening all the time,

[1:38:20] Cameron McEwen: but also nothing new was happening.

[1:38:22] Cameron McEwen: So all new and nothing new were always going on.

[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: so he would constantly call Barry Nevitt in the middle of the night and say,

[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: I made a breakthrough.

[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: To Barry,

[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: it was something he already said years ago,

[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: before.

[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: But there was a new aspect in Marshall's perceiving of it.

[1:38:42] Bob Dobbs: So maybe Barry picked up on that and tolerated these interruptions.

[1:38:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was a guy that really didn't have anybody to talk to.

[1:38:55] Cameron McEwen: And so he would talk to people like Nevitt.

[1:39:03] Cameron McEwen: And in my own view,

[1:39:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't think Nevitt really understood what McLuhan was.

[1:39:07] Cameron McEwen: talking about.

[1:39:09] Cameron McEwen: He understood parts,

[1:39:11] Cameron McEwen: but didn't understand the full picture.

[1:39:15] Cameron McEwen: And so what happens when you want to talk about somebody you didn't really understand,

[1:39:23] Cameron McEwen: and you know that you really didn't understand them,

[1:39:26] Cameron McEwen: you can either say,

[1:39:26] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:39:27] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:39:28] Cameron McEwen: I was ignorant of what was going on,

[1:39:30] Cameron McEwen: sort of take the Socratic approach,

[1:39:33] Cameron McEwen: or you can say,

[1:39:35] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:39:35] Cameron McEwen: I'll tell funny stories about the guy.

[1:39:37] Cameron McEwen: And I won't dwell on my own ignorance.

[1:39:40] Cameron McEwen: And most people choose the latter.

[1:39:42] Cameron McEwen: Most people say,

[1:39:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:39:44] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:39:45] Cameron McEwen: he may have known some things,

[1:39:47] Cameron McEwen: but he was kind of an oddball.

[1:39:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:39:50] Cameron McEwen: I knew better in most respects.

[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: And so when you spoke to me and Mark,

[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: you had the sense that we didn't get what you were saying,

[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: I imagine.

[1:40:03] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:40:05] Cameron McEwen: I knew that you didn't.

[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:40:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:40:08] Cameron McEwen: but you gave me your book,

[1:40:12] Cameron McEwen: and

[1:40:13] Cameron McEwen: I knew from some of the things that you were saying that you had an intuition of some of the things that I had an intuition about.

[1:40:26] Cameron McEwen: And so it was a little bit disappointing to me that I was unable to sort of reach across and communicate with you.

[1:40:37] Cameron McEwen: On the other hand,

[1:40:38] Cameron McEwen: I'd already had at least 30 years of the same experience,

[1:40:42] Cameron McEwen: so it didn't surprise me or depress me.

[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: And then we had further incomprehension when we were reading you or you reading me.

[1:40:57] Bob Dobbs: So when did we first have our first recorded talk?

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: Was it 2015 or was that our second phase?

[1:41:05] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:41:06] Bob Dobbs: I think it was 2015 or so.

[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: We first talked and recorded and then we were beginning to see something that we could understand.

[1:41:16] Bob Dobbs: And we did that for many years,

[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: a couple of years.

[1:41:19] Bob Dobbs: Then we had a few years,

[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: and it was just a year or so ago,

[1:41:22] Bob Dobbs: you said,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: wait a minute,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: we can do this again.

[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: Because you recognize the meteorological level versus the chemical level.

[1:41:30] Bob Dobbs: That was about a year or two ago,

[1:41:31] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:41:33] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:41:34] Cameron McEwen: at least a couple of years.

[1:41:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:41:37] Cameron McEwen: I think that's roughly right,

[1:41:38] Cameron McEwen: what you just said.

[1:41:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: I think that you could notice.

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: for my book or something that,

[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: if anybody's going to understand you,

[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: it might be Bob,

[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: If we just wait it out.

[1:41:53] Cameron McEwen: The way this New Science works is that you cannot come to understand it without already understanding it.

[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: This is another one of the difficulties involved.

[1:42:09] Cameron McEwen: There are different senses of time.

[1:42:12] Cameron McEwen: that are involved in this New Science,

[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: which are very difficult for most people.

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: So the fact that you already understand things that are very important to McLuhan means that we can talk because you don't need to achieve

[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: the understanding.

[1:42:35] Cameron McEwen: The understanding is already there.

[1:42:37] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:42:37] Bob Dobbs: So let's go over,

[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: let's look at some of the quotes you have here.

[1:42:44] Bob Dobbs: Joe Keogh,

[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: in the

[1:42:50] Bob Dobbs: November 18th email,

[1:42:53] Bob Dobbs: pre-tribal awareness.

[1:42:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:42:57] Cameron McEwen: I'm just trying to,

[1:43:07] Cameron McEwen: go ahead,

[1:43:07] Cameron McEwen: I'm just,

[1:43:07] Cameron McEwen: I'll find it,

[1:43:08] Cameron McEwen: I'm just.

[1:43:09] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: so you have here

[1:43:11] Bob Dobbs: Joe Keogh.

[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: July 6,

[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: 1970,

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: page 413 in letters.

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says to Joe,

[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: Havelock's preface to Plato shows how the phonetic alphabet scrapped tribal man,

[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: but retrieves a primordial role of individual and pre-tribal awareness.

[1:43:31] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: So that's a good one.

[1:43:34] Cameron McEwen: So let's comment on that just for a minute.

[1:43:40] Cameron McEwen: How does that retrieval work?

[1:43:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: it retrieves by enacting.

[1:43:45] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[1:43:46] Cameron McEwen: you could not make the transition without that transition being a possibility.

[1:43:56] Cameron McEwen: So everybody in tribal societies all over the world had been enacting tactile space,

[1:44:09] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[1:44:10] Cameron McEwen: simply because human beings are not possible outside of tactile space.

[1:44:15] Cameron McEwen: They're always doing it,

[1:44:17] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:44:17] Cameron McEwen: So when you put together words,

[1:44:22] Cameron McEwen: when you understand somebody else,

[1:44:24] Cameron McEwen: when you grow up,

[1:44:27] Cameron McEwen: when you cook things,

[1:44:31] Cameron McEwen: when you discover a new way to hunt an animal or something,

[1:44:34] Cameron McEwen: all of these things presuppose tactile space,

[1:44:38] Cameron McEwen: But...

[1:44:39] Cameron McEwen: That tactile space is not illuminated and it's certainly not conscious.

[1:44:45] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is saying here is with the transition to the phonetic alphabet,

[1:44:52] Cameron McEwen: tactile space got emphasized.

[1:44:55] Cameron McEwen: And why?

[1:44:56] Cameron McEwen: Because it was the biggest change that had ever happened to human beings.

[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: So when you have the biggest change,

[1:45:05] Cameron McEwen: then something is illuminated for...

[1:45:10] Cameron McEwen: retrieval.

[1:45:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: So that explains that quote.

[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: So then the next one,

[1:45:18] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:45:19] Bob Dobbs: so he has this on his mind in 1970.

[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: So a month later,

[1:45:24] Bob Dobbs: August 17th,

[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: 1970,

[1:45:27] Bob Dobbs: he writes to Lynn White,

[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: and this is in

[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: Andrew Chrystall's thesis,

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: page 207.

[1:45:39] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan writes to White,

[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: The liquidating of the tribal encyclopedia of the bards was done by phonetic literacy,

[1:45:47] Bob Dobbs: but there was retrieved something of great antiquity,

[1:45:50] Bob Dobbs: namely pre-tribal metaphysical man.

[1:45:53] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: Here it is.

[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: He's saying this stuff.

[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: I see that quote in 1970 from Rolling Stone.

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: And then I don't see these,

[1:46:05] Bob Dobbs: the Joe Keogh and that until 88,

[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: 87,

[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: when the letters come out.

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I got it right away back then.

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: I think I did later.

[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: I would read this,

[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[1:46:19] Bob Dobbs: that's the,

[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: Rolling Stone point.

[1:46:22] Bob Dobbs: But I didn't.

[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: know Andrew's thesis.

[1:46:24] Bob Dobbs: I have a copy of it,

[1:46:25] Bob Dobbs: but I don't recall reading this in Andrew's thesis.

[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: I may have.

[1:46:29] Bob Dobbs: I have different versions of his thesis.

[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Anyway,

[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: that's a good find.

[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: And then you have in his book with Bruce Powers,

[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: 1976,

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: 77,

[1:46:44] Bob Dobbs: he's composing it.

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: There's a note in the Global Village.

[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: Is it in the book?

[1:46:54] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: you mean a note at the bottom of the page?

[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:47:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:47:01] Cameron McEwen: Or at the end of the chapter.

[1:47:02] Cameron McEwen: I forget if they have end notes or footnotes.

[1:47:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: It says,

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: the electronic society,

[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: can become boundless,

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: directionless,

[1:47:12] Bob Dobbs: falling easily into the dark of the mind and the world of primordial intuition.

[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: Loss of individualism invites once again the comfort of tribal loyalties.

[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: And that's where we are today,

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: Electronic society can become boundless directions falling easily into the dark of the mind and the world of primordial intuition.

[1:47:35] Bob Dobbs: And loss of individualism invites once again the comfort of tribal loyalties.

[1:47:41] Bob Dobbs: So retrieving that pre-tribal metaphysical man is...

[1:47:51] Bob Dobbs: a major effort of understanding or comprehension today.

[1:47:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:47:55] Cameron McEwen: But it's also tremendously difficult.

[1:48:00] Cameron McEwen: And because it involves identity loss,

[1:48:04] Cameron McEwen: before you can have new identity gain,

[1:48:07] Cameron McEwen: it involves violence.

[1:48:09] Cameron McEwen: And so you have people cutting themselves,

[1:48:12] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:48:13] Cameron McEwen: or taking extreme amount of drugs or something.

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: But at the national level,

[1:48:20] Cameron McEwen: you have the potential of extreme forms of war.

[1:48:25] Cameron McEwen: So this is what is happening today,

[1:48:29] Cameron McEwen: but this darkness is something that's extremely threatening.

[1:48:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:48:35] Bob Dobbs: and everybody is searching for retrieving that individual metaphysical state,

[1:48:42] Bob Dobbs: but they put it in cultural terms,

[1:48:45] Bob Dobbs: either visual bias or tribal bias.

[1:48:49] Bob Dobbs: They don't get the,

[1:48:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say the pure condition,

[1:48:52] Bob Dobbs: but they don't get to the middle.

[1:48:55] Bob Dobbs: That's the problem here.

[1:48:57] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:48:58] Bob Dobbs: You can see all the therapies.

[1:49:00] Bob Dobbs: All the therapies don't get it.

[1:49:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:49:02] Bob Dobbs: all the cultural efforts.

[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: So let's just tie that to how we began the conversation today.

[1:49:09] Cameron McEwen: The environment itself and therefore the way to that environment.

[1:49:18] Cameron McEwen: and therefore the application that becomes possible on the basis of that environment,

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: all those things are invisible.

[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: They're just as invisible as literature was before Plato,

[1:49:32] Cameron McEwen: just as invisible as printing was before Gutenberg,

[1:49:36] Cameron McEwen: just as invisible as the chemical elements were before Lavoisier.

[1:49:42] Cameron McEwen: So we're dealing with that invisibility and its consequences.

[1:49:48] Bob Dobbs: And you could say just as McLuhan is invisible.

[1:49:53] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:49:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:49:54] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: so you then have a quote from the first version of Counterblast,

[1:50:04] Bob Dobbs: 1954.

[1:50:08] Bob Dobbs: And you say,

[1:50:09] Bob Dobbs: or you quote,

[1:50:09] Bob Dobbs: Until writing was invented,

[1:50:11] Bob Dobbs: we lived in acoustic space where the Eskimo now lives.

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: Boundless,

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: directionless,

[1:50:16] Bob Dobbs: horizonless.

[1:50:18] Bob Dobbs: The dark of the mind,

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: the world of emotion,

[1:50:20] Bob Dobbs: primordial intuition,

[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: terror.

[1:50:22] Bob Dobbs: Then you put in tribal?

[1:50:24] Bob Dobbs: Question mark,

[1:50:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:50:25] Bob Dobbs: That's you putting that in there,

[1:50:29] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:50:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:50:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:50:31] Bob Dobbs: Then the next sentence.

[1:50:36] Bob Dobbs: Speech is a social chart of this dark bog.

[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: You have that question,

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: tribal,

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: again?

[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: Speech structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space,

[1:50:45] Bob Dobbs: shrouding the race.

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: Now that's...

[1:50:47] Bob Dobbs: The whole thing of...

[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: That quote from 1943 goes into what capital speech is and what we started talking about,

[1:50:57] Bob Dobbs: the act of speech and in the middle.

[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: That's what structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space shrouding the race.

[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: It is a cosmic invisible architecture of the human dark.

[1:51:08] Bob Dobbs: Radio returns us to the dark of the mind,

[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: to the invasions from Mars and Orson Welles.

[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: It mechanizes the well of loneliness that is acoustic space.

[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: brackets you put in pure acoustic space.

[1:51:21] Bob Dobbs: The human heartthrob put on a PA system provides a well of loneliness in which anyone can drown.

[1:51:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:51:29] Bob Dobbs: so in light of what we've been saying,

[1:51:31] Bob Dobbs: that's kind of obvious what he's saying.

[1:51:34] Bob Dobbs: And if you understand this,

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: you would get it.

[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: So then you say,

[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: now this might be the test,

[1:51:43] Bob Dobbs: the sum of all that we've read in the quotes.

[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: You say the sum,

[1:51:48] Bob Dobbs: question mark,

[1:51:49] Bob Dobbs: then you say individual and pre-tribal awareness equals metaphysical man,

[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: equals primordial intuition.

[1:51:56] Bob Dobbs: And that would be the essentialities,

[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: the essentials that you quoted from 1943.

[1:52:02] Bob Dobbs: Individualism equals the dark of the mind,

[1:52:06] Bob Dobbs: equals the world of emotion,

[1:52:07] Bob Dobbs: primordial intuition and terror,

[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: equals the human dark,

[1:52:11] Bob Dobbs: equals the well of loneliness,

[1:52:13] Bob Dobbs: equals the human heartthrob.

[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: in which anyone can drown.

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: So you're asking if that's the sum.

[1:52:23] Cameron McEwen: I should say that

[1:52:25] Cameron McEwen: I was using the equal sign there in a way that's probably wrong.

[1:52:33] Cameron McEwen: I was saying both equal and not equal.

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: you were failing.

[1:52:38] Bob Dobbs: You should have just put hyphen.

[1:52:41] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,

[1:52:42] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: hyphen is middleness.

[1:52:44] Bob Dobbs: Middleness.

[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: This integral awareness is the goal here,

[1:52:53] Bob Dobbs: always the goal all through all the cultures.

[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:52:57] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan says that it almost has a renaissance potential today for more and more people to get that individual awareness because of the overload

[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: they're stuck in.

[1:53:14] Bob Dobbs: The paralysis they're stuck in is so extreme.

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: They could pop out of it.

[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: And I hear iON saying that.

[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: In their terms,

[1:53:22] Bob Dobbs: they said the only way out of this mess we're in is ascension.

[1:53:26] Bob Dobbs: And then ascension has a lot of different ways iON expresses it.

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: That doesn't mean,

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:53:32] Bob Dobbs: vertical awareness or horizontal.

[1:53:34] Bob Dobbs: But I think McLuhan is getting at ascension,

[1:53:38] Bob Dobbs: the condition of,

[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: you could say pure.

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: Citadel of consciousness,

[1:53:46] Bob Dobbs: once it's worked through all these extensions of the middle,

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: so you have pure acoustic space,

[1:53:52] Bob Dobbs: there may be pure tactile space,

[1:53:55] Bob Dobbs: which would be recognizing it.

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: It's not invisible.

[1:54:00] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[1:54:00] Cameron McEwen: right.

[1:54:01] Cameron McEwen: That's what that,

[1:54:03] Cameron McEwen: when we started off our conversation,

[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: the three kinds of space posts that I did,

[1:54:11] Cameron McEwen: that's what I was talking about with it.

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: three kinds of space and their inner relationships.

[1:54:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:54:17] Bob Dobbs: So you make a simple statement at the beginning of the Three Spaces blog,

[1:54:22] Bob Dobbs: and then you've got to spiral through these more complex statements,

[1:54:25] Bob Dobbs: including the 1943 essay.

[1:54:28] Bob Dobbs: And if you can surf those,

[1:54:29] Bob Dobbs: then you arrive at what the simple statement you started off with was.

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: But you need to go through these variations that can trip up your mind.

[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: So then you say the Gutenberg Galaxy retrieves this individualism,

[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: and that's in quotes,

[1:54:47] Bob Dobbs: because it's not pure,

[1:54:48] Bob Dobbs: when it eventually finds that the subject is an empty fiction.

[1:54:52] Bob Dobbs: And you say,

[1:54:53] Bob Dobbs: after subject,

[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: it's subject.

[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: So the Gutenberg Galaxy retrieves this individualism,

[1:54:58] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,

[1:54:58] Bob Dobbs: individualism,

[1:54:59] Bob Dobbs: when it eventually finds that the subject,

[1:55:01] Bob Dobbs: its subject,

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: is an empty fiction.

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:55:05] Bob Dobbs: That's the bias of visual extension.

[1:55:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:55:09] Cameron McEwen: So notice that that's kind of a...

[1:55:11] Cameron McEwen: bookend to the earlier quotation from the letter to Joe Keogh.

[1:55:23] Cameron McEwen: Because he says that the phonetic alphabet scrapped tribal man but retrieved primordial role of individual and pre-tribal awareness.

[1:55:33] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that that's at the start of the phonetic alphabet it.

[1:55:41] Cameron McEwen: revolution,

[1:55:42] Cameron McEwen: the individual and pre-tribal awareness was emphasized by taking advantage of its leverage.

[1:55:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:55:53] Bob Dobbs: of the alphabetic leverage.

[1:55:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:55:56] Cameron McEwen: But at the other end of the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[1:55:59] Cameron McEwen: that leverage turns against itself.

[1:56:01] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: So at the start,

[1:56:04] Cameron McEwen: you have the advantage,

[1:56:07] Cameron McEwen: and at the end,

[1:56:08] Cameron McEwen: you have the disadvantage.

[1:56:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:56:10] Bob Dobbs: And that's because you've been hypnotized the whole way through,

[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: and you've still got to deal with that hypnosis paralysis.

[1:56:20] Bob Dobbs: And it's even...

[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: The pressure is even more so because you retrieve tribal comforts,

[1:56:26] Bob Dobbs: which are what iON says,

[1:56:29] Bob Dobbs: the tech body gives everybody comfort at any service,

[1:56:32] Bob Dobbs: any level instantly.

[1:56:34] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:56:35] Cameron McEwen: But it's not just negative hypnotism.

[1:56:40] Cameron McEwen: the hypnotism that enables stuff like modern medicine.

[1:56:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:56:46] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:56:47] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:56:50] Cameron McEwen: you guys have a company that is very much involved with modern medicine and,

[1:57:00] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:57:01] Cameron McEwen: what we know about how the body needs to take care of itself.

[1:57:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:57:06] Bob Dobbs: you said you guys.

[1:57:07] Bob Dobbs: You mean me and Carolyn?

[1:57:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:57:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:57:10] Cameron McEwen: So that hypnotism has two sides to it.

[1:57:13] Cameron McEwen: Everything,

[1:57:14] Cameron McEwen: because we want to look at the middle,

[1:57:16] Cameron McEwen: everything possible has its upside and its downside.

[1:57:21] Cameron McEwen: And the Gutenberg Galaxy is like this.

[1:57:23] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:57:24] Bob Dobbs: iON always says there's two conversations in every issue.

[1:57:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:57:29] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:57:29] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:57:30] Bob Dobbs: So the...

[1:57:39] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:57:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to,

[1:57:41] Bob Dobbs: let's,

[1:57:42] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:57:42] Bob Dobbs: get one more quote.

[1:57:43] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:57:44] Bob Dobbs: speech would be the addition of some limited visuality to overwhelming orality.

[1:57:51] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:57:52] Bob Dobbs: speech would be the addition of visuality or some limited visuality to overwhelming orality.

[1:57:58] Bob Dobbs: And literacy would be the mining of this visuality for use.

[1:58:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: that's a question.

[1:58:04] Bob Dobbs: And the electric would be the mining of orality for use.

[1:58:08] Bob Dobbs: Threatening to become the complete loss of visuality into the boundless,

[1:58:12] Bob Dobbs: directionless,

[1:58:13] Bob Dobbs: horizonless,

[1:58:14] Bob Dobbs: dark of the mind,

[1:58:14] Bob Dobbs: the world of emotion,

[1:58:15] Bob Dobbs: primordial intuition,

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: and terror.

[1:58:18] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:58:18] Bob Dobbs: I would agree with that.

[1:58:20] Bob Dobbs: So there's the traps.

[1:58:24] Bob Dobbs: What do you call it?

[1:58:25] Bob Dobbs: Elephant traps and

[1:58:27] Bob Dobbs: Indian lion cages or something?

[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:58:29] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:58:31] Bob Dobbs: So this is how you talk about awareness today,

[1:58:37] Bob Dobbs: what we're doing.

[1:58:39] Bob Dobbs: If you don't include the factors we're including in our talk,

[1:58:42] Bob Dobbs: you're not getting there.

[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: You're not defining the problem.

[1:58:48] Bob Dobbs: You're not defining the cage you're in correctly.

[1:58:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:58:53] Cameron McEwen: you're not emerging into New Science,

[1:58:57] Cameron McEwen: which is the discernment of the environment.

[1:59:07] Cameron McEwen: The condition.

[1:59:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:59:09] Cameron McEwen: in which we've always lived.

[1:59:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:59:13] Cameron McEwen: And if you think about it in ontological terms,

[1:59:19] Cameron McEwen: what we need to do is we need to get away from ontology as some kind of choice between materialism and idealism and realize that ontology

[1:59:35] Cameron McEwen: has to be a choice.

[1:59:35] Cameron McEwen: to do with the middle ground,

[1:59:38] Cameron McEwen: with the tactile between those things,

[1:59:43] Cameron McEwen: with the generation of those things.

[1:59:47] Cameron McEwen: And in order to see that,

[1:59:50] Cameron McEwen: you have to go through all of the sorts of problems that we've discussed.

[1:59:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking that the tech body maybe really erases the middle to extreme,

[2:00:03] Bob Dobbs: and it's very hard to figure out the middle.

[2:00:05] Bob Dobbs: but the tech body environment.

[2:00:06] Bob Dobbs: So let's see if

[2:00:08] Bob Dobbs: I get to that or if that's the right way to say it.

[2:00:12] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:00:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking here on page 130,

[2:00:17] Bob Dobbs: and I guess I'll just,

[2:00:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how much we did in 130,

[2:00:21] Bob Dobbs: but I'll just start off here after the Counterblast quote,

[2:00:30] Bob Dobbs: for it is not accessible to the mass media.

[2:00:32] Bob Dobbs: So I go,

[2:00:33] Bob Dobbs: no matter how many walls have

[2:00:35] Bob Dobbs: fallen.

[2:00:36] Bob Dobbs: The citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen,

[2:00:40] Bob Dobbs: nor is it likely to fall.

[2:00:42] Bob Dobbs: That's what McLuhan says.

[2:00:44] Bob Dobbs: And then

[2:00:45] Bob Dobbs: I say Gnosticism believes it did fall,

[2:00:49] Bob Dobbs: for it is not accessible to the mass media.

[2:00:53] Bob Dobbs: Then I go,

[2:00:54] Bob Dobbs: more autonomy for the individual.

[2:00:57] Bob Dobbs: We're beginning to move into the,

[2:00:59] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:00:59] Bob Dobbs: autonomous Anthropomorphic Physical,

[2:01:01] Bob Dobbs: or AP,

[2:01:02] Bob Dobbs: social effect.

[2:01:04] Bob Dobbs: It's not blatant Anthropomorphic Physical,

[2:01:06] Bob Dobbs: but I've explained that memes are also coming out of it.

[2:01:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm attempting to describe how both conditions are happening,

[2:01:13] Bob Dobbs: the android meme and the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[2:01:17] Bob Dobbs: The merger parallels to the separate intelligence,

[2:01:21] Bob Dobbs: which you would call the middle.

[2:01:23] Bob Dobbs: These five separateness quotations above help to illustrate McLuhan's vision of what's unfolding toward full development.

[2:01:32] Bob Dobbs: Then I ask,

[2:01:32] Bob Dobbs: final cause.

[2:01:34] Bob Dobbs: So that's a lot of garble there.

[2:01:39] Bob Dobbs: I want to see what my next quote says,

[2:01:42] Bob Dobbs: if it helps explain this.

[2:01:47] Bob Dobbs: So I'm taking a quote from Cliché to Archetype,

[2:01:51] Bob Dobbs: page 200.

[2:01:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:01:54] Cameron McEwen: very good quotation.

[2:01:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:01:56] Bob Dobbs: the expressionist,

[2:01:57] Bob Dobbs: that's 1910,

[2:01:57] Bob Dobbs: 1920,

[2:01:59] Bob Dobbs: the expressionist had discovered that the creative process is a kind of repetition of the stages of apprehension,

[2:02:06] Bob Dobbs: somewhat along the lines that relates

[2:02:08] Bob Dobbs: that relate Coleridge's primary and secondary imagination.

[2:02:13] Bob Dobbs: In the same way,

[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: there would seem to be an echo of the formative process of consciousness in the entire content of the unconscious.

[2:02:21] Bob Dobbs: Read that again.

[2:02:21] Bob Dobbs: In the same way,

[2:02:22] Bob Dobbs: there would seem to be an echo of the formative process of consciousness in the entire content of the unconscious.

[2:02:28] Bob Dobbs: This,

[2:02:28] Bob Dobbs: in turn,

[2:02:29] Bob Dobbs: implies a close liaison between private and corporate awareness.

[2:02:33] Bob Dobbs: though which exerts the most effect on the other may depend entirely on the degree of awareness achieved.

[2:02:39] Bob Dobbs: That's saying,

[2:02:40] Bob Dobbs: that's talking middle there.

[2:02:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:02:42] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:02:44] Cameron McEwen: I hadn't realized this before,

[2:02:45] Cameron McEwen: but this is really talking about the same thing as that 1943 quotation.

[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:02:54] Cameron McEwen: That's when he talks about the formative process of consciousness and how that is unconscious.

[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: read what he says if you have it there.

[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: Read that again.

[2:03:06] Cameron McEwen: A momentito.

[2:03:10] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[2:03:10] Cameron McEwen: just as language offers an extensive and complex apprehension of the structure of beings,

[2:03:17] Cameron McEwen: so that faculty which produce this state of language is perpetually operative.

[2:03:23] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[2:03:23] Cameron McEwen: Intuitive perception of essentials.

[2:03:28] Cameron McEwen: And it just,

[2:03:29] Cameron McEwen: he seems to be saying...

[2:03:31] Cameron McEwen: basically the same thing,

[2:03:33] Cameron McEwen: but in different language.

[2:03:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: It's simpler.

[2:03:38] Bob Dobbs: He gets a little simpler later.

[2:03:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:03:42] Cameron McEwen: because the first expression of anything is always unclear.

[2:03:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:03:52] Cameron McEwen: The first expression of something always demands some precision.

[2:03:58] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:03:59] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[2:04:00] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to just...

[2:04:01] Cameron McEwen: walk to another room here.

[2:04:03] Cameron McEwen: We're looking after one of our neighbor's dogs over in Paris,

[2:04:08] Cameron McEwen: and I can hear that the dog may need something,

[2:04:11] Cameron McEwen: so I'm just going to...

[2:04:13] Bob Dobbs: There might be some noise in the background.

[2:04:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[2:04:17] Bob Dobbs: So what was I going to say?

[2:04:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:04:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says to me,

[2:04:24] Bob Dobbs: when I spoke to him through the Evergreens,

[2:04:26] Bob Dobbs: he said...

[2:04:26] Bob Dobbs: And I was quoting from that period,

[2:04:28] Bob Dobbs: the early 50s.

[2:04:29] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[2:04:29] Bob Dobbs: I was not as clear back then.

[2:04:33] Bob Dobbs: He actually says that.

[2:04:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:04:35] Bob Dobbs: I was not as clear.

[2:04:36] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[2:04:37] Bob Dobbs: he hadn't really got it.

[2:04:39] Bob Dobbs: He hadn't processed

[2:04:41] Bob Dobbs: Innis clearly.

[2:04:43] Bob Dobbs: Or maybe he needed to get that contact with

[2:04:47] Bob Dobbs: Ted Carpenter,

[2:04:48] Bob Dobbs: with the Eskimo knowledge in the late 50s.

[2:04:51] Bob Dobbs: That might have helped him.

[2:04:53] Bob Dobbs: So you like to see him not really getting it.

[2:04:56] Bob Dobbs: really clearly until 1960.

[2:05:00] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[2:05:00] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.

[2:05:02] Cameron McEwen: He says that himself,

[2:05:03] Cameron McEwen: that the most important intellectual experiences of his life were in the late

[2:05:14] Cameron McEwen: 1950s.

[2:05:15] Cameron McEwen: Right. So that's an amazing thing for somebody to say who had a conversion to Catholicism in 1937 and then got exposed.

[2:05:26] Cameron McEwen: exposed to Lewis and Giedion in the early

[2:05:29] Cameron McEwen: 40s, and to

[2:05:31] Cameron McEwen: Mallarmé and

[2:05:33] Cameron McEwen: Innis and Eisenstein in the

[2:05:36] Cameron McEwen: 40s, to say in the

[2:05:37] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, after all of that,

[2:05:40] Cameron McEwen: that he was beginning to get clear,

[2:05:44] Cameron McEwen: that's really something.

[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: that shows you the work that has to be done.

[2:05:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:05:50] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[2:05:51] Cameron McEwen: That is the work of the mind right there.

[2:05:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:05:55] Bob Dobbs: I remember Dave Wurst used to say to me,

[2:05:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:05:57] Bob Dobbs: the hardest thing to do is to become aware.

[2:05:59] Bob Dobbs: And

[2:05:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan spells out the stages of awareness traps.

[2:06:04] Bob Dobbs: You've got to work your way through.

[2:06:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:06:07] Bob Dobbs: That's why you've got to read all his work.

[2:06:09] Bob Dobbs: You've got to read all that early stuff to get to the later stuff to see what he went through.

[2:06:13] Bob Dobbs: And hopefully you're going through it too.

[2:06:17] Cameron McEwen: So the key word in what you just said is stages.

[2:06:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:06:23] Cameron McEwen: And,

[2:06:23] Cameron McEwen: um,

[2:06:25] Cameron McEwen: it occurs to people sort of automatically that stages or phases must be chronological.

[2:06:35] Cameron McEwen: But in McLuhan,

[2:06:36] Cameron McEwen: they're exactly not chronological.

[2:06:39] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[2:06:40] Cameron McEwen: So when he talks about stages,

[2:06:43] Cameron McEwen: he always talks about retrieval and replay.

[2:06:46] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:06:48] Bob Dobbs: Tetra is a simple way to sum up the complexities he's worked his way through.

[2:06:58] Bob Dobbs: The act of the tetrad,

[2:06:59] Bob Dobbs: the enhancement,

[2:07:01] Bob Dobbs: obsolescence,

[2:07:01] Bob Dobbs: retrieval,

[2:07:02] Bob Dobbs: and reversal,

[2:07:05] Bob Dobbs: you've got to see that's happening all the time in confronting.

[2:07:08] Bob Dobbs: confronting the invisible.

[2:07:11] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[2:07:11] Cameron McEwen: And notice that he begins to see that himself only around 1970.

[2:07:18] Cameron McEwen: So this is 10 years before his death,

[2:07:21] Cameron McEwen: and he's already 60 years old.

[2:07:26] Cameron McEwen: And he's just beginning to become clear about what's always been there,

[2:07:33] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't see it.

[2:07:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:07:34] Bob Dobbs: you actually,

[2:07:35] Bob Dobbs: in interviews,

[2:07:36] Bob Dobbs: especially one with Tom Wolfe about 1973,

[2:07:39] Bob Dobbs: he's actually quite happy-looking,

[2:07:42] Bob Dobbs: handsome-looking in his face compared to pictures of him in the 50s and

[2:07:47] Bob Dobbs: 60s.

[2:07:48] Bob Dobbs: He seems to be radiating this completion.

[2:07:51] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[2:07:54] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:07:54] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:07:55] Cameron McEwen: in the

[2:07:56] Cameron McEwen: 60s, he was a really sick guy.

[2:07:59] Bob Dobbs: Very tense.

[2:08:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:08:03] Cameron McEwen: He had something growing in his brain that was causing blackouts and causing forgetfulness.

[2:08:10] Cameron McEwen: And so he,

[2:08:12] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:08:13] Cameron McEwen: he was on the brink of death.

[2:08:15] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:08:16] Bob Dobbs: And so the fact I selected this quote shows that I was on to what you discovered in 43.

[2:08:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:08:25] Bob Dobbs: I knew that this kind of complexity that he's doing here,

[2:08:30] Bob Dobbs: you had to.

[2:08:32] Bob Dobbs: pars,

[2:08:33] Bob Dobbs: as they say.

[2:08:34] Bob Dobbs: You had to spend time with it.

[2:08:37] Bob Dobbs: Sure,

[2:08:37] Cameron McEwen: but many,

[2:08:38] Cameron McEwen: many quotations that you have in the pamphlet here are like that.

[2:08:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:08:43] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:08:44] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[2:08:45] Cameron McEwen: when you pick out the report from Rolling Stone in 1970 and say that that's very important,

[2:08:53] Cameron McEwen: as far as I know,

[2:08:54] Cameron McEwen: nobody else has looked at that issue.

[2:08:58] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:08:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:08:59] Cameron McEwen: And so that's a very good example of your intuition.

[2:09:04] Bob Dobbs: My bulldog-ness.

[2:09:05] Bob Dobbs: That's right,

[2:09:05] Bob Dobbs: my intuition.

[2:09:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:09:09] Bob Dobbs: Part of being a bulldog is you actually know you're getting it,

[2:09:13] Bob Dobbs: but you're maybe refining how you express it to people.

[2:09:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:09:18] Cameron McEwen: And you have to be open to saying,

[2:09:24] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:09:25] Cameron McEwen: that was fallacious.

[2:09:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:09:27] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to take that back,

[2:09:28] Cameron McEwen: but it was.

[2:09:29] Cameron McEwen: It was something that happened on my way.

[2:09:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:09:32] Bob Dobbs: that's why I like going to the seminars.

[2:09:34] Bob Dobbs: They often,

[2:09:35] Bob Dobbs: on the surface,

[2:09:36] Bob Dobbs: were repeating an event that repeats itself.

[2:09:39] Bob Dobbs: But I knew there was always some new nuance going on.

[2:09:43] Bob Dobbs: So in my radio show,

[2:09:46] Bob Dobbs: when I talk,

[2:09:47] Bob Dobbs: not with iON,

[2:09:48] Bob Dobbs: but other people after iON has left,

[2:09:51] Bob Dobbs: some surface listening might say,

[2:09:53] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:09:54] Bob Dobbs: Bob keeps saying the same stuff every fucking show.

[2:09:57] Bob Dobbs: But no,

[2:09:57] Bob Dobbs: it's not that for me.

[2:09:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm seeing it clearer every time,

[2:10:02] Bob Dobbs: especially when you encounter new people who say their awareness evokes a new problem.

[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: They got new complexities that you aren't aware of until you meet them.

[2:10:17] Cameron McEwen: Plus,

[2:10:18] Cameron McEwen: there's external events are continually changing as well.

[2:10:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:10:22] Bob Dobbs: complexifying.

[2:10:22] Bob Dobbs: So would that be the Socratic process?

[2:10:27] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:10:27] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[2:10:28] Cameron McEwen: It's a dialogue of the soul with itself.

[2:10:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:10:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[2:10:32] Bob Dobbs: So it's definitely what I've been doing all my life.

[2:10:34] Bob Dobbs: I enjoy doing it.

[2:10:36] Bob Dobbs: You kind of have to have a,

[2:10:38] Bob Dobbs: maybe that's what faith is or grace,

[2:10:43] Bob Dobbs: is that you enjoy this exploration that reality brings to you.

[2:10:49] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:10:49] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:10:50] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't,

[2:10:51] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[2:10:52] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember where,

[2:10:53] Cameron McEwen: but

[2:10:54] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks about how

[2:10:57] Cameron McEwen: experiencing pleasure is essential to this kind of thinking.

[2:11:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:11:05] Bob Dobbs: no,

[2:11:06] Bob Dobbs: that's true.

[2:11:06] Bob Dobbs: And see if you come across it,

[2:11:10] Bob Dobbs: look it up.

[2:11:11] Bob Dobbs: I think it's Interior Landscape.

[2:11:12] Bob Dobbs: I can't find it,

[2:11:13] Bob Dobbs: but he talks about the hand or the arm resting limpidly.

[2:11:20] Bob Dobbs: Look at the word limpid.

[2:11:21] Bob Dobbs: See if you can find that in your,

[2:11:23] Bob Dobbs: whatever you've got as an inventory.

[2:11:25] Bob Dobbs: uh

[2:11:26] Bob Dobbs: It should show up in interior landscape,

[2:11:28] Bob Dobbs: but I can't find it.

[2:11:28] Bob Dobbs: But it's interesting how he describes how the hand hangs limpidly.

[2:11:33] Bob Dobbs: It's that level of...

[2:11:36] Bob Dobbs: pleasure you're talking about.

[2:11:37] Bob Dobbs: You're in a state of pleasure.

[2:11:41] Bob Dobbs: Are you looking at it right now?

[2:11:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:11:44] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to find it.

[2:11:45] Cameron McEwen: So,

[2:11:46] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[2:11:46] Bob Dobbs: I'll keep talking.

[2:11:47] Cameron McEwen: I'm paying attention to you.

[2:11:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:11:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:11:51] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:11:52] Bob Dobbs: they have that great quote from page 200 in from Cliché to Archetype.

[2:11:57] Bob Dobbs: And then I go,

[2:11:59] Bob Dobbs: correctly,

[2:11:59] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[2:12:00] Bob Dobbs: that's tactility once again,

[2:12:02] Bob Dobbs: or in your terms,

[2:12:03] Bob Dobbs: the middle.

[2:12:04] Bob Dobbs: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth had a letter exchange and debate.

[2:12:08] Bob Dobbs: But Coleridge was the first to detect,

[2:12:10] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:12:11] Bob Dobbs: the medium is the message on a very small scale.

[2:12:15] Bob Dobbs: Then I said,

[2:12:15] Bob Dobbs: remember,

[2:12:16] Bob Dobbs: media are the archetypes of the unconscious,

[2:12:18] Bob Dobbs: and they form the consciousness.

[2:12:21] Bob Dobbs: Then I have the formative process.

[2:12:23] Bob Dobbs: There it is again.

[2:12:25] Bob Dobbs: Then

[2:12:27] Bob Dobbs: I seem to be quoting McLuhan,

[2:12:28] Bob Dobbs: who says,

[2:12:28] Bob Dobbs: in the same way there would seem to be an echo,

[2:12:31] Bob Dobbs: unquote,

[2:12:32] Bob Dobbs: of the massaging of consciousness in the entire content of the unconscious,

[2:12:38] Bob Dobbs: defined as a technological environment.

[2:12:40] Bob Dobbs: That was the new term for that,

[2:12:43] Bob Dobbs: for the middle.

[2:12:45] Bob Dobbs: That's about media massaging us in a complex way,

[2:12:49] Bob Dobbs: perhaps trying to play down this process.

[2:12:53] Bob Dobbs: And I give the quote to say that,

[2:12:55] Bob Dobbs: to illustrate that.

[2:12:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,

[2:12:56] Bob Dobbs: this in turn implies a close liaison between private and corporate awareness.

[2:13:01] Bob Dobbs: though which exerts the most effect on the other may depend entirely on the degree of awareness achieved.

[2:13:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:13:07] Bob Dobbs: that's interesting how the effect that you would perceive depends on your degree of awareness.

[2:13:13] Bob Dobbs: It's not the principle of certainty.

[2:13:17] Bob Dobbs: You alter what you see depending on the tool you use.

[2:13:22] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:13:22] Cameron McEwen: So we were talking earlier about the difficult dialectic between the...

[2:13:32] Cameron McEwen: initial starting of an environment.

[2:13:36] Cameron McEwen: Then the environment gets developed in various ways,

[2:13:41] Cameron McEwen: and then people within that environment begin to see it.

[2:13:46] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:13:46] Cameron McEwen: So it's already there,

[2:13:50] Cameron McEwen: and then parts of it get seen.

[2:13:52] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me,

[2:13:55] Cameron McEwen: I've got a continual frog in my throat.

[2:14:01] Cameron McEwen: So people,

[2:14:03] Cameron McEwen: normal,

[2:14:04] Cameron McEwen: everyday people begin to see an environment only very late,

[2:14:10] Cameron McEwen: but they do get to see it because they're living in it.

[2:14:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:14:16] Bob Dobbs: that's romanticized as,

[2:14:18] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:14:18] Bob Dobbs: people catch on the last year of their life or something,

[2:14:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:14:23] Bob Dobbs: just before they die.

[2:14:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:14:24] Cameron McEwen: they see the moment of death seeing your life unfold before you.

[2:14:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:14:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:14:31] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:14:32] Bob Dobbs: so

[2:14:33] Bob Dobbs: I then say,

[2:14:34] Bob Dobbs: after quoting McLuhan and the liaison between private and corporate awareness,

[2:14:38] Bob Dobbs: you have these two features in consciousness impinging on each other,

[2:14:42] Bob Dobbs: and somehow the degree of awareness gets the upper hand in shaping the private and the corporate.

[2:14:47] Bob Dobbs: The more aware you are of the implications of what you're doing,

[2:14:49] Bob Dobbs: you might have an advantage.

[2:14:52] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good.

[2:14:54] Bob Dobbs: And then

[2:14:55] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[2:14:56] Bob Dobbs: I like this quotation.

[2:14:59] Bob Dobbs: up above because it references the tactile interplay.

[2:15:02] Bob Dobbs: One aspect is massaging one side and the other side is being massaged by the previous side and the degree of awareness is a factor.

[2:15:10] Bob Dobbs: That's where I get the quote audience of the intellect above.

[2:15:15] Bob Dobbs: What is the audience of somebody exercising for himself?

[2:15:18] Bob Dobbs: We're getting into this with the world situation today.

[2:15:21] Bob Dobbs: People aren't going to be able to socialize.

[2:15:23] Bob Dobbs: They're not going to get anything out of sport in the Zoom culture.

[2:15:26] Bob Dobbs: They'll wander off.

[2:15:29] Bob Dobbs: People are going to start wandering off dazed depending on the degree of awareness achieved.

[2:15:36] Bob Dobbs: The reason this is about the audience of the intellect and voluntary

[2:15:40] Bob Dobbs: AP or Anthropomorphic Physical or voluntary ESP is the fragmenting,

[2:15:46] Bob Dobbs: the isolating,

[2:15:47] Bob Dobbs: the walling off of the hive mind,

[2:15:49] Bob Dobbs: tribal comforts,

[2:15:51] Bob Dobbs: merged in the cloned ESP.

[2:15:54] Bob Dobbs: The cloned ESP is the new tribal loyalties or comforts.

[2:15:58] Bob Dobbs: I presented different sentences that talk about the isolated individual,

[2:16:03] Bob Dobbs: isolated individual in quotes.

[2:16:05] Bob Dobbs: And then

[2:16:07] Bob Dobbs: I then quote McLuhan,

[2:16:07] Bob Dobbs: 1962,

[2:16:10] Bob Dobbs: in Prospect magazine.

[2:16:12] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[2:16:13] Bob Dobbs: the multiplicity of media,

[2:16:15] Bob Dobbs: and then I say,

[2:16:16] Bob Dobbs: there's so much media that the humans can't be conditioned anymore for the first time in history.

[2:16:20] Bob Dobbs: The person was the victim,

[2:16:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's words,

[2:16:24] Bob Dobbs: the servomechanism of his technology since the beginning of time.

[2:16:29] Bob Dobbs: But now the sheer multiplicity of them,

[2:16:32] Bob Dobbs: of the technologies,

[2:16:34] Bob Dobbs: She-he is beginning to awaken.

[2:16:37] Bob Dobbs: She-he doesn't get stuck in any one of them.

[2:16:40] Bob Dobbs: She-he goes from one to the next,

[2:16:42] Bob Dobbs: but she-he can't live with them all merged.

[2:16:44] Bob Dobbs: That's a fragmenting,

[2:16:46] Bob Dobbs: separating,

[2:16:46] Bob Dobbs: individualizing effect.

[2:16:49] Bob Dobbs: Now that's not healthy in a way.

[2:16:56] Bob Dobbs: I jumped ahead.

[2:16:57] Bob Dobbs: That's a fragmenting,

[2:16:58] Bob Dobbs: separating,

[2:16:59] Bob Dobbs: individualizing effect.

[2:17:00] Bob Dobbs: There's a service and a disservice to that.

[2:17:03] Bob Dobbs: Are you with me?

[2:17:05] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:17:05] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[2:17:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:17:07] Cameron McEwen: I think we should go to the end of this,

[2:17:11] Cameron McEwen: but then I think we should go back to its start,

[2:17:14] Cameron McEwen: because there's a lot of meat in what you're talking about here that can be brought out.

[2:17:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:17:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm glad that I got this whole,

[2:17:23] Bob Dobbs: I want an inspired rant here.

[2:17:25] Bob Dobbs: Based on all that we have been talking about,

[2:17:28] Bob Dobbs: there we have a rant.

[2:17:29] Bob Dobbs: Bob's all worked up about it.

[2:17:31] Bob Dobbs: Then we can go over this the next time we talk.

[2:17:35] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:17:35] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:17:35] Bob Dobbs: then the second quote,

[2:17:36] Bob Dobbs: the one from Rolling Stone,

[2:17:37] Bob Dobbs: cites the ancient individual by himself.

[2:17:40] Bob Dobbs: We are becoming like that.

[2:17:42] Bob Dobbs: We became isolated individuals,

[2:17:44] Bob Dobbs: but,

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: very primitive.

[2:17:46] Bob Dobbs: Just look at the porn.

[2:17:48] Bob Dobbs: Very primitive.

[2:17:48] Bob Dobbs: We're caveman people.

[2:17:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has that theme in the

[2:17:52] Bob Dobbs: 50s in one of his articles.

[2:17:55] Bob Dobbs: In War and Peace in the Global Village,

[2:17:56] Bob Dobbs: he quotes Finnegans Wake.

[2:17:58] Bob Dobbs: Quote,

[2:17:59] Bob Dobbs: it brought the dear prehistoric scenes all back again.

[2:18:02] Bob Dobbs: fresh as of yore.

[2:18:05] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,

[2:18:06] Bob Dobbs: and that can be all kinds of violent scenes.

[2:18:08] Bob Dobbs: There's the identity crisis all over the place.

[2:18:11] Bob Dobbs: And that can be all kinds of violent scenes,

[2:18:13] Bob Dobbs: cavemen,

[2:18:14] Bob Dobbs: hijacking women and raping them.

[2:18:16] Bob Dobbs: That was very primitive,

[2:18:17] Bob Dobbs: very isolating,

[2:18:19] Bob Dobbs: and perhaps not much social order before social order was installed.

[2:18:23] Bob Dobbs: That's another example of the isolated getting kicked out of the cloned ESP environment,

[2:18:28] Bob Dobbs: that's today,

[2:18:29] Bob Dobbs: and only engaging ESP.

[2:18:32] Bob Dobbs: When convenient for the person,

[2:18:34] Bob Dobbs: that's voluntary ESP.

[2:18:36] Bob Dobbs: One has the loneliness that suggests that it's the separateness of man.

[2:18:41] Bob Dobbs: The human dimensions are lost during the mechanical era or industrial society of non-human ends.

[2:18:47] Bob Dobbs: Quoting McLuhan,

[2:18:48] Bob Dobbs: non-human ends.

[2:18:49] Bob Dobbs: And then quoting McLuhan,

[2:18:50] Bob Dobbs: while the unconscious and commercially unutilized powers struggle dimly to restore balance and order by homeopathic means.

[2:18:58] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,

[2:18:59] Bob Dobbs: homeopathic means might be,

[2:19:00] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:19:01] Bob Dobbs: the word making the market.

[2:19:02] Bob Dobbs: That's another isolated,

[2:19:03] Bob Dobbs: fragmenting situation.

[2:19:05] Bob Dobbs: Holy shit,

[2:19:06] Bob Dobbs: do I go on?

[2:19:08] Bob Dobbs: How does this go on?

[2:19:10] Bob Dobbs: Let me see.

[2:19:11] Bob Dobbs: This is ridiculous.

[2:19:13] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:19:13] Bob Dobbs: it does end.

[2:19:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:19:14] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to finish it.

[2:19:16] Bob Dobbs: What a mouthful this is.

[2:19:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:19:22] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[2:19:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm actually saying this to my friend.

[2:19:26] Bob Dobbs: We're recording it.

[2:19:27] Bob Dobbs: and I'm expecting

[2:19:28] Bob Dobbs: explaining the quotes to him.

[2:19:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:19:31] Bob Dobbs: And then the third quote,

[2:19:33] Bob Dobbs: Counterblast,

[2:19:33] Bob Dobbs: 1968.

[2:19:35] Bob Dobbs: No matter how many walls have fallen,

[2:19:38] Bob Dobbs: that should be 1969.

[2:19:40] Bob Dobbs: No matter how many walls have fallen,

[2:19:42] Bob Dobbs: the citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen,

[2:19:44] Bob Dobbs: nor is it likely to fall,

[2:19:45] Bob Dobbs: for it is not accessible to the mass media.

[2:19:48] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[2:19:48] Bob Dobbs: the basic structure of humans may be private,

[2:19:51] Bob Dobbs: but then you start creating a society and they're not so private,

[2:19:54] Bob Dobbs: not so independent.

[2:19:56] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan says,

[2:19:56] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:19:57] Bob Dobbs: In the end,

[2:19:58] Bob Dobbs: media don't affect the essence.

[2:20:00] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:20:00] Bob Dobbs: I changed the words.

[2:20:01] Bob Dobbs: The essence of a person,

[2:20:03] Bob Dobbs: unquote.

[2:20:04] Bob Dobbs: That's another idea of isolation and detachment from the merged condition of social communion.

[2:20:10] Bob Dobbs: One is simulating the ESP which surrounds everybody and penetrates.

[2:20:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:20:14] Bob Dobbs: that would be the middle.

[2:20:15] Bob Dobbs: The ESP is the middle that people intuit.

[2:20:19] Bob Dobbs: And go back to the 1943 quote.

[2:20:22] Bob Dobbs: One is simulating the ESP which surrounds everybody and penetrates.

[2:20:26] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,

[2:20:27] Bob Dobbs: I have merged,

[2:20:28] Bob Dobbs: interpenetrated.

[2:20:30] Bob Dobbs: That's the popular mythology of ESP.

[2:20:33] Bob Dobbs: Everybody intimately inside each other.

[2:20:35] Bob Dobbs: It's a merger of humans via the global theater.

[2:20:38] Bob Dobbs: Then capitalism,

[2:20:40] Bob Dobbs: the afterimage of the printing press,

[2:20:42] Bob Dobbs: couldn't continue to function while everybody's sharing the same disembodied space without having to own anything.

[2:20:48] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:20:48] Bob Dobbs: the World Economic Forum,

[2:20:50] Bob Dobbs: they're promising a condition where you won't own anything,

[2:20:53] Bob Dobbs: where it's been going on for most of the 20th century.

[2:20:58] Bob Dobbs: The meme of literate individuality started to allow pay TV and Walkmans,

[2:21:03] Bob Dobbs: and all this a specialized electronic delight.

[2:21:07] Bob Dobbs: And then the computer digital technology continued to throw people back into isolated,

[2:21:11] Bob Dobbs: walled-off spaces,

[2:21:12] Bob Dobbs: which would exaggerate personal consumerism.

[2:21:15] Bob Dobbs: Accompanying this retrieval of a virtual visual space,

[2:21:19] Bob Dobbs: which is the patina of the archetypal silent print condition,

[2:21:24] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme retrieves this.

[2:21:27] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme digitized and atomized every digital user.

[2:21:31] Bob Dobbs: That's a popular word,

[2:21:32] Bob Dobbs: atomized.

[2:21:34] Bob Dobbs: People use that word today,

[2:21:35] Bob Dobbs: atomized.

[2:21:37] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[2:21:38] Bob Dobbs: And that ends that thing.

[2:21:41] Bob Dobbs: And that's a thing.

[2:21:43] Bob Dobbs: That's a big wad.

[2:21:46] Bob Dobbs: Holy cow.

[2:21:48] Bob Dobbs: But I'm sort of taking all the quotes,

[2:21:50] Bob Dobbs: two,

[2:21:50] Bob Dobbs: three,

[2:21:50] Bob Dobbs: or four quotes above that and bouncing them off to each other.

[2:21:54] Bob Dobbs: So that's useful.

[2:21:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:21:58] Cameron McEwen: There's a lot of good stuff in that.

[2:22:02] Cameron McEwen: And the topic,

[2:22:05] Cameron McEwen: as you say in the first line,

[2:22:06] Cameron McEwen: is that's tactility.

[2:22:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:22:09] Bob Dobbs: the middle space,

[2:22:10] Bob Dobbs: the middle.

[2:22:12] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to describe it.

[2:22:15] Bob Dobbs: So what else do I want to say?

[2:22:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:22:23] Bob Dobbs: so let's hear some things you say.

[2:22:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:22:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[2:22:27] Bob Dobbs: It's too much to talk about right now,

[2:22:29] Bob Dobbs: and it's time to close.

[2:22:31] Bob Dobbs: We've gone over two hours,

[2:22:34] Bob Dobbs: so that's pretty good.

[2:22:36] Bob Dobbs: Running through your quotes,

[2:22:37] Bob Dobbs: your contribution,

[2:22:38] Bob Dobbs: and then I echo them.

[2:22:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:22:44] Cameron McEwen: Who's echoing who?

[2:22:45] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:22:47] Cameron McEwen: there's a lot of back and forth going on here.

[2:22:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:22:50] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty good.

[2:22:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:22:52] Bob Dobbs: so thanks for finding those quotes on the middle.

[2:23:00] Bob Dobbs: That last bunch of quotes you found in the letters,

[2:23:02] Bob Dobbs: that was pretty good.

[2:23:03] Bob Dobbs: Because I used to think that that quote,

[2:23:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:23:08] Bob Dobbs: into the

[2:23:09] Bob Dobbs: 70s from Rolling Stone was the only time he said it.

[2:23:11] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't until later that we find the others.

[2:23:14] Bob Dobbs: And I didn't even find them all.

[2:23:16] Bob Dobbs: You found some of them that I didn't know about.

[2:23:19] Bob Dobbs: So it actually became,

[2:23:21] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was odd that he,

[2:23:23] Bob Dobbs: I thought he was just saying it once,

[2:23:25] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[2:23:26] Bob Dobbs: How come he doesn't develop it?

[2:23:28] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:23:28] Bob Dobbs: he does develop it.

[2:23:30] Bob Dobbs: It takes another 20 years to find the potential to find the quotes.

[2:23:36] Cameron McEwen: You see,

[2:23:36] Cameron McEwen: the way that things work is that we write things or think things or talk things,

[2:23:44] Cameron McEwen: and then afterwards we find out what was already there and what we ourselves were saying or writing or thinking,

[2:23:54] Cameron McEwen: but we didn't know they were there.

[2:23:56] Bob Dobbs: That's what the clue is then.

[2:23:57] Cameron McEwen: So this question.

[2:23:58] Cameron McEwen: quote here from uh from cliched archetype that you yeah um wrote down that you selected this turns out to be a kind of commentary on the rolling stone thing that

[2:24:14] Cameron McEwen: you thought was isolated but it turns out that you yourself knew that it wasn't isolated yeah that's right well what McLuhan said i don't know what i think until i say it yeah exactly exactly Thank you.

[2:24:28] Cameron McEwen: And that happens with writing.

[2:24:30] Cameron McEwen: It happens with all sorts of stuff.

[2:24:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:24:32] Bob Dobbs: That's why you don't have to get too much novelty.

[2:24:36] Bob Dobbs: You just go back and look at what you already did.

[2:24:39] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty interesting,

[2:24:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:24:41] Bob Dobbs: to look at it again because it will be different.

[2:24:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[2:24:45] Cameron McEwen: So that's retrieval,

[2:24:46] Cameron McEwen: replay,

[2:24:47] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.

[2:24:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:24:48] Bob Dobbs: I think that's my main activity is listening to my thoughts in a large part of my day.

[2:24:58] Bob Dobbs: And a lot of them are repeated,

[2:24:59] Bob Dobbs: but they're always new.

[2:25:00] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going over.

[2:25:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:25:04] Bob Dobbs: you're not thinking conceptually.

[2:25:07] Bob Dobbs: You're listening to echoes,

[2:25:08] Bob Dobbs: basically.

[2:25:12] Cameron McEwen: Is that something that you do on your various shows,

[2:25:17] Cameron McEwen: or are you talking about something that you do when you're by yourself?

[2:25:21] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:25:22] Bob Dobbs: I spend a lot of time by myself,

[2:25:23] Bob Dobbs: and I am not bored at all.

[2:25:25] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.

[2:25:27] Bob Dobbs: I got so much interesting thoughts going through my head because I remember a lot of the interesting sources.

[2:25:35] Bob Dobbs: So having a good memory is important because you can remember these things.

[2:25:39] Cameron McEwen: And so

[2:25:41] Bob Dobbs: I find that very,

[2:25:42] Bob Dobbs: the best entertainment.

[2:25:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't think it's narcissism.

[2:25:45] Bob Dobbs: It's not narcissism.

[2:25:47] Bob Dobbs: You're discovering.

[2:25:48] Bob Dobbs: It's actually a joy to think again.

[2:25:52] Cameron McEwen: And is this like shuffling a deck?

[2:25:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:25:58] Cameron McEwen: And what's another one?

[2:26:01] Cameron McEwen: It's an activity that you're consciously and systematically doing?

[2:26:05] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:26:06] Bob Dobbs: I don't have to try.

[2:26:08] Bob Dobbs: As soon as I wake up,

[2:26:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing it.

[2:26:10] Bob Dobbs: And I do it all day long.

[2:26:13] Bob Dobbs: And often I'll,

[2:26:15] Bob Dobbs: when I talk,

[2:26:15] Bob Dobbs: if someone listened to me,

[2:26:18] Bob Dobbs: spy to me all day long for six months,

[2:26:21] Bob Dobbs: they'd see that I was always talking to people when it would sound like the same thing.

[2:26:27] Bob Dobbs: But I'm always thinking about this same...

[2:26:31] Bob Dobbs: dilemma or solution,

[2:26:34] Bob Dobbs: be both.

[2:26:35] Bob Dobbs: But if I start talking to somebody,

[2:26:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't talk about nonsense or gossip.

[2:26:39] Bob Dobbs: I'll talk about that stuff and get their reaction to it,

[2:26:44] Bob Dobbs: which is always interesting.

[2:26:46] Bob Dobbs: Or they'll start telling me their stuff and it'll translate to me.

[2:26:49] Bob Dobbs: So I basically have been like McLuhan,

[2:26:52] Bob Dobbs: just talking my whole fucking life,

[2:26:54] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[2:26:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:26:57] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:26:57] Cameron McEwen: To me,

[2:26:57] Cameron McEwen: this sounds like that you have a very developed

[2:27:01] Cameron McEwen: unconscious that is not only is it very active,

[2:27:08] Cameron McEwen: but it's not entirely unconscious.

[2:27:11] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:27:12] Bob Dobbs: I call it conscious mediumship.

[2:27:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:27:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:27:16] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:27:16] Cameron McEwen: good.

[2:27:16] Cameron McEwen: So that's exactly what

[2:27:18] Cameron McEwen: I see you doing with the universe or with the dead.

[2:27:22] Cameron McEwen: And what you're saying here is that,

[2:27:27] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:27:27] Cameron McEwen: it's going on.

[2:27:28] Cameron McEwen: It's sort of the...

[2:27:31] Cameron McEwen: background drama that's going on with everybody all the time.

[2:27:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:27:38] Cameron McEwen: You have developed a connection with that that practically nobody else has.

[2:27:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:27:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm always looking and interacting and smiling with people because

[2:27:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking they're thinking what I'm thinking.

[2:27:57] Bob Dobbs: They're not,

[2:27:58] Bob Dobbs: but I'm aware that that's...

[2:28:00] Bob Dobbs: could be going on.

[2:28:02] Bob Dobbs: They could be cautious of it.

[2:28:03] Bob Dobbs: So sometimes I'll get someone into it.

[2:28:09] Bob Dobbs: They're not used to come along and meet them on the walkway,

[2:28:12] Bob Dobbs: a few people,

[2:28:13] Bob Dobbs: and they're right in the sun,

[2:28:14] Bob Dobbs: having a nice walk,

[2:28:15] Bob Dobbs: and then they're talking this deep talk,

[2:28:17] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[2:28:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm ready to go into it at any moment,

[2:28:21] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[2:28:23] Cameron McEwen: What I'm interested in,

[2:28:24] Cameron McEwen: or

[2:28:25] Cameron McEwen: I'm interested in many aspects of this,

[2:28:27] Cameron McEwen: but one of the things I'm particularly interested in is

[2:28:30] Cameron McEwen: How do you have this going on in your mind and in another part of your activity,

[2:28:44] Cameron McEwen: you're able to make jokes,

[2:28:46] Cameron McEwen: you're able to talk about stuff that seems to be completely different from this process.

[2:28:52] Cameron McEwen: How does that work?

[2:28:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:28:54] Bob Dobbs: that's the newness of new things that happen every day.

[2:28:59] Bob Dobbs: It's always confirming what you learned the other day,

[2:29:04] Bob Dobbs: the previous day.

[2:29:05] Bob Dobbs: The new things are repeating.

[2:29:10] Bob Dobbs: They're spiraling,

[2:29:10] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:29:11] Bob Dobbs: I guess it's a spiral.

[2:29:12] Bob Dobbs: You constantly go around the same circle,

[2:29:14] Bob Dobbs: the same insight,

[2:29:15] Bob Dobbs: but there's always new content or new people bringing their bizarre initial perversity to it.

[2:29:24] Bob Dobbs: And then you refine what they said.

[2:29:28] Bob Dobbs: you get them back on the same page.

[2:29:32] Cameron McEwen: But isn't that a kind of foreground activity that is very different and very simple compared to the background activity that's going on at the same time?

[2:29:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:29:47] Cameron McEwen: And so,

[2:29:48] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:29:49] Cameron McEwen: is there a link between those things or are you able to do it more or less like a ventriloquist dummy?

[2:29:56] Bob Dobbs: It's always coming into me.

[2:29:57] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:29:58] Bob Dobbs: someone's always sending me this stuff in my mind.

[2:30:01] Bob Dobbs: I like to say that these aren't my thoughts.

[2:30:03] Bob Dobbs: These are my neighbor's thoughts.

[2:30:06] Bob Dobbs: And I'm constantly listening to my neighbor.

[2:30:10] Bob Dobbs: Because you can't pin me down as a point of view.

[2:30:13] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:30:14] Bob Dobbs: of course.

[2:30:15] Bob Dobbs: So after we do iON,

[2:30:17] Bob Dobbs: the short show and the long show,

[2:30:19] Bob Dobbs: then

[2:30:20] Bob Dobbs: iON leaves.

[2:30:22] Bob Dobbs: And then I start talking to people,

[2:30:23] Bob Dobbs: and they'll bring up things.

[2:30:24] Bob Dobbs: They might even say,

[2:30:24] Bob Dobbs: I was listening to a recording of what you said last week,

[2:30:27] Bob Dobbs: and they'll quote me,

[2:30:28] Bob Dobbs: and then I'll have something new to say.

[2:30:29] Bob Dobbs: And I am quite stunning.

[2:30:32] Bob Dobbs: People are very,

[2:30:33] Bob Dobbs: holy shit,

[2:30:34] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[2:30:34] Bob Dobbs: I never heard anything like that.

[2:30:36] Bob Dobbs: That's amazing.

[2:30:37] Bob Dobbs: And they're amazed that I keep doing this every week.

[2:30:40] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:30:42] Bob Dobbs: I understand the perpetual motion.

[2:30:44] Bob Dobbs: I've tapped into perpetual imagination in a way.

[2:30:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:30:49] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:30:51] Bob Dobbs: I assume you have it because you're always writing it.

[2:30:54] Bob Dobbs: Don't you have it?

[2:30:56] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?

[2:30:57] Cameron McEwen: I say that's in the quotation.

[2:30:59] Cameron McEwen: That's what Coleridge calls primary imagination.

[2:31:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:31:03] Bob Dobbs: but don't you have that?

[2:31:05] Bob Dobbs: You're always writing the same issue all the time in your blog,

[2:31:08] Bob Dobbs: so aren't you doing that?

[2:31:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:31:11] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[2:31:12] Cameron McEwen: What you were just calling spiraling.

[2:31:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:31:15] Bob Dobbs: but you're doing it more by yourself.

[2:31:17] Bob Dobbs: You don't have a social interaction like I do.

[2:31:20] Cameron McEwen: No.

[2:31:21] Bob Dobbs: Not at all.

[2:31:23] Cameron McEwen: The only person that I can talk to about this on this level is you.

[2:31:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:31:32] Bob Dobbs: glad to.

[2:31:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:31:34] Bob Dobbs: it's,

[2:31:34] Bob Dobbs: what would I say?

[2:31:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had started it.

[2:31:37] Bob Dobbs: I picked up on it.

[2:31:39] Bob Dobbs: Finally met someone who could do it with me.

[2:31:43] Bob Dobbs: I do with other people,

[2:31:44] Bob Dobbs: but they're usually just stunned,

[2:31:46] Bob Dobbs: and they'll come up with different points.

[2:31:48] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:31:48] Bob Dobbs: we've been doing it for years,

[2:31:50] Bob Dobbs: so people have a backlog of quoted memories they can bring in,

[2:31:56] Bob Dobbs: but they can't talk.

[2:31:58] Bob Dobbs: They can't start the talk.

[2:32:00] Bob Dobbs: They don't have any thoughts at the beginning,

[2:32:01] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?

[2:32:02] Bob Dobbs: I've always got thoughts immediately.

[2:32:06] Bob Dobbs: You could call me up in five hours and we'll fucking do it again,

[2:32:09] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[2:32:09] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[2:32:10] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[2:32:10] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:32:11] Cameron McEwen: and vice versa.

[2:32:12] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[2:32:13] Bob Dobbs: so,

[2:32:15] Bob Dobbs: and I think

[2:32:17] Bob Dobbs: I really don't identify with the content.

[2:32:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:32:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm not,

[2:32:21] Bob Dobbs: it's effortless.

[2:32:22] Bob Dobbs: It's not trying to get somewheres,

[2:32:25] Bob Dobbs: though I am always getting momentary arrivals of delight.

[2:32:29] Bob Dobbs: or pattern recognition,

[2:32:30] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[2:32:32] Bob Dobbs: But I'm not stopping.

[2:32:34] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:32:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, I think,

[2:32:38] Bob Dobbs: when he said there's no finish line,

[2:32:39] Bob Dobbs: he was talking about that personally for himself.

[2:32:43] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:32:44] Cameron McEwen: let me just go back for half a second to the analogy with chemistry.

[2:32:50] Cameron McEwen: If you think of all of the experiments,

[2:32:53] Cameron McEwen: all of the discoveries,

[2:32:55] Cameron McEwen: all of the patents,

[2:32:57] Cameron McEwen: all of the new products,

[2:32:58] Cameron McEwen: that have happened from 1800 until now,

[2:33:02] Cameron McEwen: that sort of discovery is also possible in the new environment.

[2:33:08] Cameron McEwen: And the new environment is what we're breathing,

[2:33:11] Cameron McEwen: it's what we're constantly thinking about and taking delight in.

[2:33:19] Cameron McEwen: And it has all of the complexity of what was possible in the old environment.

[2:33:28] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:33:29] Bob Dobbs: Ed,

[2:33:30] Bob Dobbs: this is what's amazing with iON.

[2:33:32] Bob Dobbs: We have many other products we're making,

[2:33:34] Bob Dobbs: amazing things,

[2:33:36] Bob Dobbs: new technologies.

[2:33:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:33:39] Bob Dobbs: iON has endless talk.

[2:33:41] Bob Dobbs: It can go on and on and on forever,

[2:33:43] Bob Dobbs: dealing with all kinds of people.

[2:33:45] Bob Dobbs: But we are making things.

[2:33:46] Bob Dobbs: It's not aimless.

[2:33:47] Bob Dobbs: And so there's many other products that we have on the back burner that are being developed.

[2:33:53] Bob Dobbs: So it's this endless thinking.

[2:33:59] Bob Dobbs: Working with iON,

[2:34:00] Bob Dobbs: we make environments from it.

[2:34:05] Cameron McEwen: That's a good boy.

[2:34:06] Cameron McEwen: I'm bringing in the dog here.

[2:34:11] Cameron McEwen: I'm talking to the dog.

[2:34:13] Cameron McEwen: No difference.

[2:34:19] Bob Dobbs: You've got my point there.

[2:34:23] Bob Dobbs: With iON,

[2:34:24] Bob Dobbs: we make things.

[2:34:25] Bob Dobbs: We externalize our conversation,

[2:34:28] Bob Dobbs: which is pretty amazing.

[2:34:30] Cameron McEwen: But aren't we trying to make something?

[2:34:33] Cameron McEwen: We're trying to make accessible the new environment.

[2:34:36] Cameron McEwen: The new environment that's perpetually there,

[2:34:39] Cameron McEwen: that always has been there.

[2:34:41] Cameron McEwen: The new environment that is the ancient environment.

[2:34:44] Bob Dobbs: We're trying to explain what Bob's doing with iON.

[2:34:47] Bob Dobbs: That's the hidden agenda.

[2:34:48] Bob Dobbs: That's what the Tech Body article is about.

[2:34:50] Bob Dobbs: Because the Tech Body enters in,

[2:34:52] Bob Dobbs: sometimes takes over iON,

[2:34:54] Bob Dobbs: which is pretty incredible.

[2:34:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:34:58] Cameron McEwen: see,

[2:34:58] Cameron McEwen: I know nothing about all that sort of stuff.

[2:35:00] Cameron McEwen: So that's one of the interesting things about the pamphlet,

[2:35:04] Cameron McEwen: about how you're going to develop the whole link to the tech body,

[2:35:11] Cameron McEwen: what that has to do with what

[2:35:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to express.

[2:35:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:35:18] Bob Dobbs: that's where I took a chance.

[2:35:19] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if McLuhan helps me get there.

[2:35:24] Bob Dobbs: And so,

[2:35:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:35:24] Bob Dobbs: that's...

[2:35:25] Bob Dobbs: That's the task I'm doing for you and for the listeners to see if I do that challenge you just laid out.

[2:35:34] Bob Dobbs: That's the thing.

[2:35:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:35:35] Bob Dobbs: It's something about the tech body that I'm trying to point out.

[2:35:38] Bob Dobbs: But we have to go through this incredible background to get ready for what we're going to do in the last 30 or 40 pages.

[2:35:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:35:49] Cameron McEwen: Plus,

[2:35:50] Cameron McEwen: one of the best things about McLuhan is that when you make a bet,

[2:35:55] Cameron McEwen: that he's going to help you understand something,

[2:35:59] Cameron McEwen: that bet almost always pays off.

[2:36:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:36:02] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:36:03] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:36:04] Cameron McEwen: that's something for people to enjoy if they want to.

[2:36:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:36:09] Cameron McEwen: The usual practice with McLuhan is to say,

[2:36:12] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:36:12] Cameron McEwen: I already knew that,

[2:36:13] Cameron McEwen: or he's repeating himself,

[2:36:16] Cameron McEwen: or that's wrong.

[2:36:19] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:36:20] Cameron McEwen: All of those things are nuts.

[2:36:23] Bob Dobbs: They're what?

[2:36:23] Bob Dobbs: Nuts,

[2:36:23] Bob Dobbs: did you say?

[2:36:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:36:26] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[2:36:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:36:28] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[2:36:28] Bob Dobbs: I used to wonder why I enjoyed reading Marshall McLuhan's books all through the 70s and 80s,

[2:36:33] Bob Dobbs: and I didn't have much desire to read anything else.

[2:36:36] Bob Dobbs: Because there was so much that was in there,

[2:36:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:36:40] Bob Dobbs: to find.

[2:36:41] Bob Dobbs: So after a while,

[2:36:44] Bob Dobbs: through the years,

[2:36:45] Bob Dobbs: been around a long time,

[2:36:46] Bob Dobbs: I've read a lot of other stuff now.

[2:36:48] Bob Dobbs: But I spent many years just reading McLuhan books,

[2:36:51] Bob Dobbs: and that was good enough for me.

[2:36:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:36:54] Bob Dobbs: I didn't need a new novel or something.

[2:36:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:36:59] Cameron McEwen: no,

[2:36:59] Cameron McEwen: I agree.

[2:37:00] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to have to ring off.

[2:37:05] Cameron McEwen: because the dog needs some things that

[2:37:10] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to have to provide for him.

[2:37:13] Cameron McEwen: But I've got to say that I enjoyed our conversation a lot today,

[2:37:17] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[2:37:17] Cameron McEwen: It's good when we laugh.

[2:37:22] Bob Dobbs: We get to the itchiness of it all,

[2:37:25] Bob Dobbs: the scratching of the itch.

[2:37:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:37:27] Bob Dobbs: great talking to you,

[2:37:28] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:37:28] Bob Dobbs: We'll talk soon.

[2:37:29] Cameron McEwen: Same here,

[2:37:29] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[2:37:30] Cameron McEwen: Look forward to the next time.

[2:37:31] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[2:37:32] Bob Dobbs: great.

[2:37:32] Bob Dobbs: Bye.

[2:37:33] Cameron McEwen: Bye.